Great  Religious 
:>eachers 

f  the  east 


mifred  W.  Martin 


nil  n 


ii    I  !:;lillllillllllljlllll!!lllilllllllllillllilllllll!llllllllill!!llllllilllillllilllillilllll!ill!lll!^ 

y  ■,'.;iiM;illlill!illJIIIJIIIIIIIIII!lllliilll!ll!lli;ilillllinil!lilllllllilllltl!t!iilllllillllillllllilllllllllll!llllllllllll^  .,.....,.,n,.„u„^^ 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 
OF  THE  EAST 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


GREAT 

RELIGIOUS   TEACHERS 

OF   THE   EAST 


BY 

ALFRED  W.   MARTIN 

ASSOCIATE   LEADER    OF   THE   SOCIETY    FOB    ETHICAL 
CDLTDBE    OF   NEW    TOBK 


*     ,   <     .    c 


Ncto  gorft 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1911 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1911, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  September,  1911. 


•  •        • 

•  «       A       •  •         •  * 


NorbJooB  ^rraa 

J.  8.  Cushinjf  Co.  -  Heiwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


; 


>- 

CO 
C3 

I 

O 

c3 
to 


CO 

en 


PREFATORY  NOTE 


CD 


The  lectures  in  this  volume  are  seven  of  a 

rH  series  of  twelve,  delivered,  without  notes,  on 

^  successive  Sunday  evenings  in  the  winter  of 

1911  at  the  Meeting-House  of  the  Society  for 

Ethical  Culture  of  New  York. 

In  response  to  several  hundred  requests  for 
their  publication  they  were  written  out  and 
have  here  been  reproduced  as  nearly  as  pos- 
sible in  their  original  form. 
^  The  scripture  readings,  which  were  part  of 
the  preliminary  exercises  at  each  meeting, 
have  been  incorporated  in  the  text  of  the 
lectures. 

A  brief  bibliography  has  been  added  for  the 
benefit  of  those  who  may  wish  to  extend  their 
reading  in  the  field  of  popular,  non-technical 
literature  on  the  great  moral  leaders  whose 
life  and  work  are  here  discussed. 


V 


VI  PREFATORY   NOTE 

The  Society  for  Ethical  Culture  accords  to 
its  lecturers  entire  freedom  of  thought  and  of 
speech,  and  the  members  are  equally  free  to 
accept  or  reject  the  views  expressed  from  the 
platform.  They  commit  no  one  but  the  lec- 
turer. He  speaks  solely  for  himself,  and  has 
no  right  to  speak  for  any  one  else.  It  is 
therefore  hoped  that  these  lectures  will  be 
read  in  the  light  of  this  basic  freedom  of  the 
Ethical  fellowship. 

New  York,  September  1,  1911. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAOB 

I.    The  Discovery  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the 

East  and  its  Results 3 

II.     GoTAMA,  the  Buddha 37 

III.  Zoroaster 75 

IV.  Confucius  and  Lao-Tze 105 

V.    The  Prophets  of  Israel  and  the  Common- 
wealth OF  Man 149 

VI.    Jesus 193 

VII.    Mohammed 227 

Bibliography 267 


yu 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 


Gotama,  the  Buddha 40 

Zoroaster        .........  80 

Lao-Tze 110 

Confucius       .........  130 

Moses    . 170 

Jesus      . 200 

The  Kaaba  Stoue 240 


IX 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  SACRED 
BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST  AND  ITS 
RESULTS 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  SACRED 
BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST  AND  ITS 
RESULTS 

~1T7"HEN  this  course  of  lectures  was  first 
announced,  a  well-meaning  gentleman 
remarked,  "This  will  be  a  succession  of  intel- 
lectual treats."  Nothing  could  be  further 
from  my  purpose  than  to  meet  this  expecta- 
tion. Interesting  and  instructive,  perhaps,  as 
much  that  I  shall  say  may  be,  it  is  ethical 
culture,  not  intellectual  entertainment,  that 
constitutes  the  paramount  aim  of  the  course. 
My  hope  is  that  at  the  close  of  these  lectures 
we  shall  find  ourselves  more  catholic  in  our 
sympathies,  more  cosmopolitan  in  our  atti- 
tude toward  foreign  faiths,  more  responsive 
to  sources  of  inspiration  that  seemed  wholly 
unpromising  while  we  were  under  the  baneful 
spell  of  prejudices  born  of  ignorance.  It  is 
at  such  ethical  results  that  this  lecture-course 

3 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

aims.  Gotama  and  Zoroaster,  Confucius  and 
Mohammed  —  less  known  to  most  of  us  than 
Moses  and  the  prophets,  Jesus  and  Paul, — 
have  something  to  teach  us  that  we  need  to 
learn,  if,  indeed,  "the  Orient  is  to  complete 
the  Occident."  Only  as  we  take  up  into  our- 
selves all  that  is  vital  in  them  are  we  enabled 
to  appreciate  the  wonderful  story  of  man's 
spiritual  unfolding  and  to  discover  what  it  is 
that  we  still  need  to  round  out  and  complete 
our  own  developing  lives.  It  is  a  pathetic 
mistake  to  suppose  that  no  indispensable  good 
can  come  out  of  Oriental  Nazareths  other 
than  the  Palestinian.  Such  an  error  is  on  a 
par  with  his  who  described  the  Middle  Ages 
as  the  "dark  ages"  and  was  all  the  while  blind 
to  their  light.  Let  me  adduce  an  illustration. 
The  supreme  product  of  the  Middle  Ages  was 
St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  and  among  the  conspicu- 
ous characteristics  of  our  modern  life  is  the 
growing  revival  of  interest  in  this  saint.  We 
See  it  chiefly  in  the  remarkable  increase  of 
Franciscan  literature  within  the  past  decade. 
The  reason  for  this  revival  is  the  discovery  that 

4 


SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST 

the  middle  age  was  strong  where  our  own  is 
weak,  that  precisely  those  qualities  in  which 
St.  Francis  shone  are  the  ones  in  which  we  are 
deplorably  deficient,  that  his  positive  message 
is  exactly  what  our  age  needs  to  give  it  bal- 
ance and  roundness.  We  have  wakened  to  a 
realization  of  the  truth  that  besides  his  negative 
spirituality,  —  as  manifested  in  his  asceticism 
and  self-torture,  —  St.  Francis  possessed  also 
positive  spirituality;  witness  his  intense 
moral  earnestness,  his  profound  religious  in- 
sight and  aspiration,  his  utter  self-consecra- 
tion to  his  calling,  his  genuine  sympathy  with 
Nature,  his  ineffable  tenderness  toward  all 
living  creatures,  his  constant  habit  of  seeing 
the  things  of  time  under  the  aspect  of  eternity. 
And  it  is  just  these  positive  elements  of  his 
spiritual  nature  that  our  age  sorely  needs,  to 
balance  its  absorption  in  material  interests, 
its  devotion  to  scientific  pursuits,  its  alle- 
giance to  utilitarian  standards  of  progress 
and  success.  Similarly,  the  positive  messages 
transmitted  to  us  from  the  great  moral  teachers 
of  India,  Persia,  China  and  Arabia,  notwith- 

5 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

standing  their  local,  transient  elements,  will 
be  found  to  contain  permanent  and  universal 
precepts  concerning  graces  of  character  in 
which  our  occidental  civilization  is  deficient. 
Thus  priceless  value  and  genuine  revitalization 
are  given  to  the  teachings  of  these  ancient 
oriental  leaders  the  moment  we  enter  into  their 
spirit  and  note  their  contribution  to  the  total 
content  of  the  ideal  of  life. 

And  this  leads  us  directly  to  a  consideration 
of  the  spirit  in  which  we  shall  deal  with  our 
subject.  It  is  the  spirit  that  manifests  itself 
in  the  practice  of  appreciation,  a  modern  vir- 
tue towards  which  the  race  has  been  slowly 
climbing.  Starting  from  the  low  level  of  per- 
secution, the  three  successive  steps  of  human 
progress  have  been  forbearance,  tolerance  and 
appreciation. 

Time  was,  when,  in  Christian  civilization, 
persecution  seemed  ethically  warranted,  when 
those  in  ecclesiastical  authority,  assuming  that 
they  only  had  the  true  religion,  believed  it  was 
God's  will  that  they  should  suppress  dissenters 
and  so  vindicate  and  spread  "God's  truth." 

6 


SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST 

If  persuasion  failed,  they  resorted  to  imprison- 
ment. When  that  proved  ineffectual,  they 
tried  the  lash.  As  a  final  measure  they  con- 
demned the  dissenters  to  the  stake,  hoping  by 
fire  to  exterminate  both  heresy  and  heretics. 
Nor  are  the  traces  of  such  persecution  entirely 
extinct.  To-day  the  Christian  persecutes  the 
Jew  and  the  Jew  the  Christian.  Romanism 
persecutes  Protestantism,  Orthodox  Protes- 
tantism persecutes  liberal  Christianity,  and 
liberal  Christianity  persecutes  the  religion 
that  is  no  longer  Christian. 

A  step  upward  in  the  direction  of  the  ideal 
was  taken  when  forbearance  replaced  perse- 
cution, when  latitude  was  admitted  in  theology 
no  less  than  in  geography,  when  dissenters  were 
reluctantly  allowed  to  hold  their  heresies  with- 
out fear  of  molestation  or  threat.  And  when 
tolerance  was  substituted  for  forbearance, 
it  meant  a  new  attitude  toward  dissenters, 
because  tolerance  is  the  willing  consent  to  let 
others  hold  opinions  different  from  our  own. 
Yet  even  this  attitude,  noble  as  it  is,  cannot  be 
regarded  as  the  acme  of  spiritual  attainment. 

7 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

For  tolerance  always  implies  a  measure  of 
concession.  We  tolerate  what  we  must,  but 
would  suppress  if  we  could.  Tolerance  has  an 
air  of  patronizing  condescension  about  it.  He 
who  tolerates  affects  a  certain  offensive  su- 
periority, exhibits  a  spiritual  conceit.  Clearly, 
then,  it  cannot  be  true  that  "tolerance  is  the 
loveliest  flower  on  the  rose-bush  of  liberalism." 
Lovelier  far  is  appreciation,  which,  while 
wholly  free  from  the  blemish  that  mars  the 
beauty  of  tolerance,  adds  to  that  beauty  fresh 
graces  all  its  own.  Appreciation  is  the  spirit 
which  exceeds  tolerance,  despises  mere  for- 
bearance, blushes  at  persecution.  Toward 
the  various  religious  systems  of  the  world  it 
takes  a  sympathetic  attitude,  seeking  to  esti- 
mate each  from  the  dynamic  rather  than  from 
the  static  viewpoint,  judging  each,  not  only  by 
what  it  originally  was,  but  also  by  what  it  has 
grown  to  be.  The  spirit  of  appreciation  is 
such  that  before  every  religious  teacher  will  it 
bow,  be  he  Gotama  or  Zoroaster,  Jesus  or 
Mohammed,  evaluating  each  according  to  the 
amount  of  truth  he  has  to  teach  and  the  in- 

8 


SACRED    BOOKS    OF    THE    EAST 

spiration  which  the  record  of  his  Hfe  affords. 
Similarly,  in  its  attitude  toward  the  messages 
of  the  world's  great  teachers,  the  mark  of  the 
spirit  of  appreciation  appears.  For  it  looks 
upon  them  all  as  like  the  stops  and  pedals  of 
some  vast  organ,  each  contributing  its  par- 
ticular tone  to  the  harmony  of  human  aspira- 
tion and  faith ;  some  accentuating  the  essen- 
tial, others  the  ornamental  notes,  none,  of  itself, 
producing  the  full-orbed  music,  but  the  har- 
monious blending  of  all  creating  the  sublime 
world-symphony  of  reverence  for  the  good,  the 
beautiful  and  the  true. 

Even  toward  error  will  he,  in  whom  the 
spirit  of  appreciation  dwells,  take  a  worthy 
attitude.  Realizing  that  all  error  is  kept  alive 
only  by  the  germ  of  truth  which  it  hides,  he 
will  feel  it  his  duty  to  search  for  that  germ 
and  the  more  unpromising  its  appearance  the 
more  diligent  his  search.  For,  certain  it  is 
that  we  always  have  something  to  learn  till  we 
have  traced,  what  to  us  are  erroneous  beliefs, 
back  to  their  source  and  discovered  what 
good  and  useful  end  they  still  serve  for  those 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

who  hold  them.  If  the  spirit  of  appreciation 
be  indeed  ours,  we  shall  feel  no  disposition 
either  to  ridicule  superstitions  or  to  regard 
our  own  cherished  beliefs  as  complete  and 
final  truths.  Rather  will  we  realize  our  own 
finitude  and  the  immense  firmament  of 
thought  under  which  we  move,  ever  watchful 
for  each  new  star  that  the  guiding  heavens 
may  reveal. 

The  ultimate  source  of  information,  to 
which  alone  we  shall  appeal  in  this  series  of 
studies,  includes,  besides  the  Old  and  New  Tes- 
taments, that  noble  set  of  volumes  known  as 
"The  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,"  —  transla- 
tions into  English  of  what  might  be  called  "the 
Bibles"  of  the  Hindus,  Buddhists,  Parsees, 
Confucianists,  Mohammedans. 

When  these  sacred  scriptures  were  discov- 
ered, it  was  as  though  some  long-lost  musical 
score  had  been  brought  to  light,  which,  when 
played  by  an  orchestra  of  reverent  and  trained 
musicians,  proved  to  be  a  symphony  of  reli- 
gions, destined  to  give  a  world-audience  the 
sense  of  an  universal  spiritual  fellowship.     In 

10 


SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST 

the  year  711,  when  the  Moors  of  northern 
Africa  invaded  Spain,  they  brought  with 
them  a  book  they  called  the  "Word  of  God" 
and  for  which  they  made  the  most  astounding 
inspirational  claims.  They  declared  that  even 
though  every  extant  copy  of  this  book  were 
to  be  destroyed,  it  would  involve  no  irrepa- 
rable loss,  for  an  eternal  copy  exists  in  heaven 
whence  it  can  be  at  any  time  revealed  to  men 
anew!  This  "revelation"  proved  to  be  the 
sacred  book  of  the  Mohammedans,  the  Qur'an, 
long  since  translated  from  Arabic  into  the 
chief  languages  of  the  civilized  world. 

About  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century 
certain  travellers  from  central  Europe  found 
their  way  to  a  fertile,  densely  populated  coun- 
try which  they  called  "Cathay."  On  return- 
ing home,  they  reported  upon  conditions  ob- 
served in  this  country  —  which  meanwhile 
they  had  learned  to  name  "China."  They 
told  of  the  enormous  literary  production  of  its 
people  and  more  especially  of  the  books  that 
dealt  with  the  philosophy  of  life  and  with  the 
systematic  regulation  of  human  conduct  in  all 

11 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

the  various  relations,  private  and  public,  in 
which  members  of  a  community  find  them- 
selves. These  books  were  none  other  than 
the  Confucian  sacred  scriptures,  most  of  which 
had  beei  edited  by  Confucius,  while  one  of  the 
books  was  the  work  of  his  own  hand.  These, 
too,  like  the  Qur'an,  were  eventually  trans- 
lated into  the  leading  languages  of  the 
world. 

In  1754  Anquetil  du  Perron,  a  university 
student,  browsing  in  the  royal  library  of 
Paris,  came  upon  some  dusty  fragments  of  an 
ancient  manuscript,  written  in  a  Sanskrit 
dialect.  Great  was  his  joy  on  finding  them 
to  be  a  portion  of  the  "  Avesta,"  or  Bible  of  the 
Zoroastrians.  Eager  to  know  more  of  this 
literature  and  of  these  people,  he  took  ship  for 
Bombay,  where,  for  a  millennium  or  more  a 
colony  of  Zoroastrian  exiles  had  been  settled. 
Anquetil  resided  among  these  people  for  three 
years,  mastering  their  language  and  their  re- 
ligion. Before  returning  to  Paris,  he  came  into 
possession  of  one  hundred  and  eighty  manu- 
scripts, which,  together  with  his  original  find 

12 


SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST 

in  the  roycal  library,  constitutes  practically 
all  that  we  now  have  of  the  Zoroastrian  Bible. 
The  first  translation  of  this  book  into  any 
European  language  appeared  in  1771  at  Paris. 
Since  that  time,  however,  it  has  been  made 
accessible  to  English  and  German  readers 
as  well  as  French.      ' 

In  1757,  when  the  British  invasion  and  occu- 
pancy of  India  had  fairly  begun,  there  was 
discovered  (as  an  indirect  result  of  that  great 
commercial  enterprise)  the  *' Rig-Veda,"  the 
oldest  portion  of  one  of  the  oldest  Bibles  in  the 
world.  It  is  a  collection  of  one  thousand  and 
seventeen  prayer-hymns,  addressed  to  the 
personified  forces  and  phenomena  of  Nature. 
Following  close  upon  this  discovery  came  that 
of  the  other  three  "  Vedas."  Then  the  "  Aran- 
yakas"  or  forest  meditations,  the  "Upani- 
shads"  and  the  two  great  Epics,  the  *'Mahab- 
barata  "  and  the  "  Ramayana,"  were  discovered, 
constituting,  in  all,  a  body  of  Hindu  sacred 
literature  more  than  four  times  as  large  as  the 
Christian  scriptures.  Soon  other  Indian  books 
were  brought  to  light,  and  these  proved  to  be 

13 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

none  other  than  the  sacred  scriptures  of  the 
Buddhists,  the  "Pitakas." 

It  is  to  these  "Sacred  Books  of  the  East,'* 
then,  that  we  shall  turn,  from  week  to  week, 
for  they  are  our  ultimate  sources  of  information 
concerning  those  great  moral  leaders  whose  life 
and  teaching  we  are  to  study. 

From  the  discovery  and  translation  of  this 
oriental  literature  two  important  results  have 
followed,  the  one,  direct  and  immediate;  the 
other,  indirect  and  remote. 

The  first  and  immediate  effect  was  the 
creation  of  a  new  science,  commonly  known  as 
"comparative  religion,"  or  "comparative  the- 
ology" as  some  scholars  have  preferred  to 
designate  it.  This  science,  proceeding  by  the 
orderly  method  familiar  to  natural  scientists  — 
observation,  classification,  hypothesis  and  veri- 
fication —  has  already  produced  a  series  of 
assured  results  of  far-reaching  significance  for 
the  unification  of  religions.  Let  us  review  the 
more  important  of  these  conclusions  which  the 
science  of  comparative  religion  has  established. 

1.  The  universality  of  fundamental  moral 

14 


SACRED    BOOKS    OF    THE    EAST 

sentiments,  such  as  justice,  veracity,  gratitude, 
service,  sympathy,  love.  Far  from  charac- 
terizing the  gospel  of  any  one  religion  alone, 
these  moral  ideas  are  found  to  be  common  to 
all  religions.  Take,  for  example,  the  moral 
sentiment  of  catholicity  and  note  the  oneness  of 
thought  beneath  the  variety  of  statement  as 
we  see  it  in  the  following  quotations  from  the 
literature  of  the  seven  extant  great  religions. 

Hindu:  "The  object  of  all  religions  is 
alike,  all  seek  the  object  of  their  love  and  all 
the  world  is  love's  dwelling-place." 

Buddhist:  *'The  root  of  religion  is  to  rever- 
ence one's  own  faith  and  never  to  revile  the 
faith  of  others.  My  religion  is  like  the  sky,  it 
has  room  for  all  and  like  water  it  washes  all 
alike." 

Zoroastrian:  "Have  the  religions  of  man- 
kind no  common  ground  ?  Is  there  not  every- 
where the  same  enrapturing  beauty  ?  Broad 
indeed  is  the  carpet  God  has  spread  and  many 
are  the  colors  He  has  given  it.  Whatever  road 
I  take  joins  the  highway  that  leads  to  Thee." 

Confucian:     "The    broad-minded    see    the 

15 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

truth  in  different  religions,  the  narrow-minded 
see  only  the  differences." 

Jewish:  "Wisdom  in  all  ages  entering  into 
holy  souls,  maketh  them  friends  of  God  and 
prophets." 

Christian:  **Are  we  not  all  children  of  one 
Father  ?  Hath  not  one  God  created  us  ?  Be- 
hold how  good  and  pleasant  a  thing  it  is  for 
brethren  to  dwell  together  in  unity." 

Mohammedan:  "Whatever  be  thy  religion, 
associate  with  men  who  think  differently  from 
thee.  If  thou  canst  mix  with  them  freely  and 
are  not  angered  at  hearing  their  doctrines, 
thou  hast  attained  freedom  and  art  a  master  of 
creation." 

2.  The  universality  of  such  religious  senti- 
ments as  wonder,  awe,  reverence,  worship, 
hope,  aspiration.  These,  too,  the  comparative 
method  has  proved,  are  present  in  all  the  va- 
rious systems  of  faith.  Here,  for  example,  are 
seven  passages  from  the  same  seven  Bibles 
on  faith  in  man's  survival  of  death,  the  trust 
that  his  earthly  life  is  not  the  only  life. 

Hindu:   "Thy  body  give  to  the  plants  and 

16 


SACRED    BOOKS    OF    THE    EAST 

to  the  waters,  but  there  is  an  immortal  part 
of  thee,  transport  it  to  the  world  of  the  holy." 

Buddhist:  "The  soul  is  myself,  the  body  is 
only  my  dwelling-place.  Good  actions  go  with 
the  soul  beyond  the  river  of  death." 

Zoroastrian:  "I  fear  not  death.  I  fear 
only  not  having  lived  well  enough." 

Confucian :  "It  is  because  men  see  only  their 
bodies  that  they  hate  death." 

Jewish:  "The  memorial  of  virtue  is  immor- 
tal. Blessed  is  the  memory  of  the  just,  for 
their  works  do  follow  them." 

Christian:  "Though  our  outward  man  per- 
ish, yet  is  our  inward  man  day  by  day  re- 
newed." 

Mohammedan:  "Mortals  ask,  what  prop- 
erty has  he  left  behind  him  ?  Angels  ask,  what 
good  deeds  has  he  sent  on  before  him  ?'* 

3.  Unity  of  spiritual  substance  in  diversity 
of  religious  forms  and  ceremonies.  Differ- 
ences of  climate,  environment,  heredity  and 
racial  origin,  these,  it  has  been  shown,  gave 
rise  to  varieties  in  the  expression  of  one  and 
the  same  fundamental  religious  feeling, 
c  17 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS   TEACHERS 

Whether  it  be  the  Papuan,  squatting  in  dumb 
meditation  before  his  feathered  God ;  or  the 
Aztec,  dancing  and  chanting  before  his  sym- 
boHcal  block;  or  the  Moslem,  prostrate  in 
front  of  his  Mosque ;  or  the  Christian,  kneel- 
ing in  petitional  prayer  to  his  Father  in 
heaven;  or  the  cosmic  theist,  silently  seeking 
communion  and  at-one-ment  with  the  Infinite 
and  Eternal  whence  all  things  and  beings  are 
derived;  in  each  case  it  is  one  and  the  same 
sense  of  dependence  on  a  higher  Power  and 
of  hunger  for  a  higher,  worthier  life  that  is 
expressed. 

4.  Most  of  the  ten  commandments  ante- 
date the  Mosaic  age  and  have  their  equiva- 
lents in  most  of  the  non-Semitic  religions. 
Nay,  more,  in  the  light  of  "  comparative 
religion"  we  see  that  there  are  at  least  four 
other  commandments,  contributed  by  Bud- 
dhism, Mohammedanism,  and  Confucianism,  — 
concerning  temperance,  intellectual  honesty, 
humaneness  and  cleanliness,  —  which  may 
well  be  added  to  the  familiar  ten. 

5.  The  Golden  Rule,  far  from  having  origi- 

18 


SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST 

nated  with  Jesus,  or  even  five  hundred  vears 
earher,  with  Confucius,  is  as  old  as  the  oldest 
religion  whose  scriptures  have  come  down  to  us 
and  common  to  the  Bibles  of  all  the  world's 
great  religions.  Thus  we  find  seven  versions 
of  the  Golden  Rule  corresponding  to  the  seven 
great  religions. 

Hindu:  "The  true  rule  in  life  is  to  guard 
and  do  by  the  things  of  others  as  you  do  by 
your  own." 

Buddhist:  "One  should  seek  for  others  the 
happiness  one  desires  for  oneself." 

Zoroastrian:  "Do  as  you  would  be  done 
by." 

Confucian :  "What  you  do  not  wish  done  to 
yourself  do  not  unto  others." 

Jewish :  '^  What  you  do  not  want  your  neigh- 
bor to  do  to  you,  do  not  unto  him." 

Christian:  "All  things  whatsoever  ye  would 
that  men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to 
them." 

Mohammedan:  "Let  none  of  you  treat 
another  in  a  way  you  yourself  would  dis- 
like to  be  treated." 

19 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

Even  the  ancient  Hebrew  precept,  "an  eye 
for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth  "  (as  we  shall 
see  more  fully  when  we  enter  on  our  study  of 
Moses),  represents  the  law  of  justice  as  it  was 
understood  in  primitive  communities,  and  jus- 
tice is  the  heart  of  the  Golden  Rule. 

6.  Religions  can  no  longer  be  classified  ac- 
cording to  the  division  popular  before  the 
science  of  comparative  religion  was  created,  a 
division  that  recognized  only  two  classes  of 
religions,  Christian  and  Pagan,  divine  and 
human,  revealed  and  natural,  true  and  false. 
We  read  a  Vedic  chant  and  marvel  at  its  re- 
semblance to  familiar  Old  Testament  psalms 
and  to  the  refrain  of  the  "Litany"  in  the  Epis- 
copalian Prayer-book.  We  hear  the  Zoroas- 
trian's  prayer  for  purity  and  note*  how  slight 
a  change  in  the  language  of  his  invocation 
would  make  it  suit  the  spiritual  need  of  any 
theist  in  any  part  of  the  world.  The  "Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount"  and  the  "Noble  Eight- 
fold Path"  have  many  more  points  of  agree- 
ment than  of  difference,  while  the  ethical  spirit 
pervading   the   two    discourses   is    the   same. 

20 


SACRED    BOOKS    OF    THE    EAST 

Open  the  Bible  of  the  Moslem,  or  of  the  Con- 
fucian, and  there,  no  less  than  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament, the  credentials  of  a  religion  are  found, 
appealing  in  accents  strong  and  beautiful  to 
their  respective  believers  even  as  do  those  of 
the  Christian  scriptures  to  the  followers  of 
Jesus  and  Paul. 

7.  Prior  to  the  researches  involved  in  the 
science  of  comparative  religion  it  was  gener- 
ally supposed  that  there  are  moral  precepts  in 
the  New  Testament  which  have  no  parallel 
in  any  non-Christian  literature.  Such  was 
the  contention  of  a  somewhat  bumptious 
clergyman  at  a  memorable  meeting  of  the 
Free  Religious  Association  of  America  held 
in  Boston  nearly  forty  years  ago.  This  ear- 
nest, zealous  apologist  cited,  with  considerable 
unction,  certain  passages  from  the  Gospels, 
adding  that  these  could  not  be  matched  in  the 
sacred  books  of  any  of  the  great  ethnic  re- 
ligions. Present  at  this  meeting  was  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  himself  one  of  the  earliest 
and  foremost  champions  of  the  new  science. 
Knowing   the   clergyman's    statement   to    be 

21 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

without  adequate  foundation,  he  quietly  arose 
and  said,  with  characteristic  dignity  and 
serenity,  "The  gen tleman'sVemark  only  proves 
how  narrowly  he  has  read."  Rodrigues-,  in  his 
"Origines  du  Sermon  de  la  Montague"  has 
furnished  conspicuous  proof  of  the  fact  that 
all  the  salient  teachings  of  Jesus  had  already 
been  spoken  by  earlier  Jewish  leaders  and 
that,  consequently,  his  originality  must  be 
sought  elsewhere  than  in  his  ethical  utterances. 
Since  the  appearance  of  Rodrigues'  mono- 
graph many  an  anthology  has  appeared,  carry- 
ing the  comparative  method  beyond  the 
confines  of  the  Talmud,  Apocrypha  and  Old 
Testament  to  the  great  body  of  non-Jewish, 
pre-Christian  literature,  thereby  reconfirming 
the  conclusion  that  there  is  no  moral  precept 
in  the  New  Testament  but  can  be  paralleled 
elsewhere  in  the  Bibles  of  the  great  religions. 

8.  It  remains  to  note  one  other  important 
result  achieved  by  the  science  of  comparative 
religion.  It  has  relegated  to  the  realm  of  the 
obsolete  and  unreliable  many  a  popular  book 
on    comparative    religion,    reminding    us    of 

22 


SACRED    BOOKS    OF    THE    EAST 

yEsop's  familiar  fable  of  the  forester  and  the 
lion.  Walking  in  the  woods  one  day  they 
fell  to  discussing  the  question,  "Which  is  the 
stronger,  a  lion  or  a  man  ?"  Unable  to  arrive 
at  a  mutually  satisfying  answer,  they  were 
about  to  dismiss  the  subject  when  quite  unex- 
pectedly they  came  upon  a  piece  of  statuary 
representing  a  man  in  the  act  of  throwing 
down  a  lion.  "There,"  said  the  woodsman, 
"you  see  the  man  is  the  stronger."  To  which 
the  lion  replied,  "Ah,  yes ;  but  their  positions 
would  have  been  reversed  if  a  lion  had  been 
the  sculptor."  Too  often  have  Christian 
literary  sculptors  exhibited  the  relative  posi- 
tion of  their  own  faith  and  that  of  non- 
Christians  in  such  wise  that  it  surely  would 
have  been  reversed  had  the  latter  been  the 
sculptors.  Equally  applicable  is  the  fable 
to  those  Buddhists,  Mohammedans  and  other 
non-Christians  who  have  represented  their 
respective  religions  as  victoriously  wrestling 
with  Christianity.  Typical  of  the  former 
class  are  some  of  the  volumes  on  non-Chris- 
tian religious  systems  issued  by  the  "Society 

■  23 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

for  the  Promotion  of  Christian  Knowledge," 
also  that  most  popular  of  books  on  comparative 
religion,  "The  Ten  Great  Religions,"  by  James 
Freeman  Clarke,  of  sainted  memory.  It  is 
with  some  reluctance  that  I  make  mention  of 
his  work,  for  it  was  of  him  that  James  Marti- 
neau  —  England's  foremost  theologian  and 
philosopher  in  the  nineteenth  century — said  to 
me:  "He  is  the  New  Englander  whom  I 
venerate  most  since  the  time  of  Channing." 
Yet  with  all  due  deference  to  his  great  name 
and  remembering  that  his  work  was  published 
while  the  science  of  comparative  religion  was 
still  in  its  infancy,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
his  fundamental  position,  symbolized  by  the 
unique  design  on  the  cover  of  his  book,  is 
contrary  to  the  spirit,  method  and  results  of 
this  science.  In  the  light  of  those  results  it 
is  no  longer  possible  to  regard  Christianity 
as  the  "pleroma"  of  religion,  containing  all 
that  is  good  and  true  in  the  other  religions, 
adding  thereto  elements  of  faith  and  morals 
that  make  it  the  absolute  religion  and  thereby 
distinguish  it  from  all  other  systems  of  religion. 

24 


(( 


a 


SACRED   BOOKS    OF    THE    EAST 

Pass  we  now  to  that  indirect  and  remote  re- 
sult of  the  discovery  and  translation  of  the 
"Sacred  Books  of  the  East,"  to  which  I  referred, 
namely,  the  famous  religious  convention  held 
at  Chicago  in  1893.     Given  the  discovery  and 
translation  of  the  "Sacred  Books  of  the  East;" 
given  also  the  science  of  comparative  religion 
with  its  verified  conclusions,  and  there  would 
follow    as    a    natural,    logical    consequence    a 
World's    Parliament    of    Religions."       The 
World's  Fair"   of  that  year  furnished  the 
occasion  adequate  to  the  convening  of  a  uni- 
versal  congress   of   religions.     Not   since   the 
discovery  of  America  has   anything  so  deci- 
sively marked  the  advance  of  civilization  as 
this  mammoth   convention.     Here,   in   truth, 
was  something  bigger  than  the  Ferris  wheel, 
brighter   than   the   display   of  electric   lights, 
grander  than  the  splendor  of  the  great  "White 
City."     Even  that  magnificent  panorama  of 
architecture  and  landscape-gardening  on  the 
"Court  of  Honor"  paled  before  the  procession 
of  the  world's  great  faiths.     At  the  head  of 
that  procession  walked  a  Swedenborgian  lay- 

25 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

man,  Mr.  C.  C.  Bonney,  arm  in  arm  with 
scarlet-robed  Cardinal  Gibbons,  the  highest 
dignitary  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  the 
United  States.  Behind  them  walked  Buddhist 
and  Brahmin,  Christian  and  Confucian,  Jew 
and  Mohammedan,  Hindu  monk  and  Metho- 
dist missionary,  Zoroastrian  priest  and  Greek 
Church  bishop,  —  all  in  one  triumphant  march 
of  brotherhood.  Would  that  some  painter  had 
been  present  to  put  on  canvas  that  memorable 
scene,  symbolizing  as  it  did  the  death-knell 
of  sectarian  exclusiveness,  jealousy  and  pride, 
prophetic  as  it  was  of  the  coming  peace  among 
the  conflicting  religions  of  the  world  !  The 
Parliament  was  conceived  and  planned  by  a 
Presbyterian  preacher  of  Chicago,  Rev.  John 
Henry  Barrows.  The  closing  speech  was  deliv- 
ered by  a  Swedenborgian  layman,  the  final 
prayer  offered  by  a  Jewish  rabbi  and  the  bene- 
diction pronounced  by  a  Roman  Catholic  bishop. 
Of  the  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven  sects 
into  which  Christianity  was  then  divided, 
practically  all  the  larger  bodies  were  repre- 
sented at  the  Parliament,  excepting  only  the 

26 


SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST 

Episcopalian.  Officially  this  branch  of  the 
Christian  Church  was  without  representation, 
though  many  Episcopalians  were  present  on 
their  own  responsibility,  notably  the  Rever- 
ends A.  W.  Momerie  of  London  and  R.  Heber 
Newton  of  New  York.  The  American  Church 
followed  the  lead  of  the  Anglican  in  declining 
to  participate  in  the  proceedings  of  the  Par- 
liament. The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  head 
of  the  Anglican  Church,  took  the  ground  that 
were  Christianity  to  be  represented  on  the 
platform  with  all  the  other  religions,  it  would 
place  the  Christian  religion  on  a  level  of  equal- 
ity with  these,  which  he,  of  course,  could  not 
admit.  Consequently  he  had  no  alternative 
but  to  forbid  the  official  representation  of  his 
Church.  Given  his  premises,  and  we  all  must 
admit  that  the  Archbishop  was  logical  and 
consistent.  For,  when  Christianity,  through 
its  representatives,  consented  to  sit  in  the 
Parliament  on  equal  terms  with  other  faiths, 
it  surrendered,  whether  intentionally  or  un- 
consciously, the  claim  to  be  the  only  true, 
divine  religion  in  the  world. 

27 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

As  for  the  effect  of  the  Parliament  on  the 
Christian  and  non-Christian  delegates,  it  was 
admitted  by  the  latter  that  their  conception  of 
Christianity  had  undergone  considerable  modi- 
fication. To  these  foreigners  Christianity  had 
come  in  warships  and  at  the  point  of  the 
bayonet.  It  has  brought  the  missionary  and 
the  Bible  indeed,  but  also  the  evils  of  the 
opium  and  rum  traffic.  Not  a  few  of  the 
missionaries  had  assumed  a  haughty,  im- 
perious, un-Christian  air,  and  unfavorable 
judgment  of  Christians  as  a  class  ensued. 
But  at  the  Parliament  these  oriental  delegates 
had  an  opportunity  to  see  phases  of  Chris- 
tianity and  types  of  Christian  character 
hitherto  unknown  to  them,  and  the  result  was 
that  they  returned  to  their  respective  homes 
with  corrected  conceptions  of  both  Chris- 
tianity and  its  representatives. 

No  less  salutary  and  significant  was  the  effect 
of  the  Parliament  upon  the  ^occidental  Chris- 
tian contingent.  Their  eyes  were  now  opened 
to  certain  facts  as  never  before.  There  was 
brought  home  to  them  the  fact  that  only  one- 

28 


SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST 

third  of  the  total  population  of  the  globe  is 
Christian  and  that  with  the  single  exception  of 
Mohammedanism,  all  the  world's  great  reli- 
gions are  older  than  Christianity.  Nay  more, 
the  fact  was  brought  freshly  to  light  that  in 
the  formation  of  such  Christian  beliefs  as  the 
resurrection  and  the  trinity  and  of  such  festi- 
vals as  Christmas  and  Easter  the  influence 
of  non-Christian  religions  is  indisputable  and 
clear.  Not  least  among  the  benefits  which 
the  Parliament  wrought  was  that  exerted 
upon  missionary  enterprise.  To-day  it  is 
practically  impossible  for  our  Christian  mis- 
sionaries to  go  to  India  or  China,  or  any  other 
oriental  country  armed  with  the  doctrine  that 
two-thirds  of  the  earth's  people  are  eternally 
doomed  unless  they  accept  the  orthodox 
Christian  system  of  theology.  In  the  spring 
of  1893,  four  months  before  the  Parliament 
was  opened,  the  "American  Board  of  Com- 
missioners for  Foreign  Missions"  debated  the 
question  whether  or  not  missionaries  should 
be  allowed  to  go  to  the  Orient  unless  they  were 
prepared  to  teach  the  doctrines  of  "the  fall 

29 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

of  man"  and  "hell."  But  since  September 
of  that  year  the  question  has  not  been  revived, 
and  it  is  safe  to  say  it  never  will  be.  Still 
another  positive  good  which  the  Parliament 
achieved  was  the  wholesome  humbling  of  those 
Christians  who  with  a  Pharisaic  tone  had 
"thanked  God  they  were  not  as  these  pagan 
idolaters  and  infidels."  For  the  Parliament 
made  it  plain  that  these  pagans  were  believers, 
holding  a  living  faith  to  which  they  strove  to 
be  faithful  and  in  the  divine  origin  of  which 
they  devoutly  believe.  Moreover,  on  the 
platform  "pagan"  prayers  were  offered,  of 
which  certain  resident  Christians  confessed 
that  they  breathed  as  pure  and  elevated  a 
spirit  as  those  emanating  from  Christian 
hearts.  Here,  too,  it  was  observed  that  there 
are  aspects  of  modern  life  in  which  Confucian- 
ists  and  Zoroastrians  are  exceptionally  civil- 
ized even  as  there  are  respects  in  which  Chris- 
tian civilization  may  claim  superiority  to 
other  types.  In  a  word,  the  supreme  boon  of 
the  Parliament  has  been  the  broadening  of 
religious  sympathies,   the  removal   of  preju- 

30 


SACRED    BOOKS    OF    THE    EAST 

dices  and  misunderstandings,  the  unfolding  of 
common  moral  and  spiritual  ideas  and  ideals, 
the  whole  inevitably  making  for  the  Brother- 
hood of  Man  to  a  degree  unprecedented  in  the 
history  of  civilization.  Small  wonder,  there- 
fore, that  since  the  Parliament  many  a  minor 
"congress  of  religious  liberals"  should  have 
been  formed,  and  that  the  movement  toward 
religious  unity  should  have  taken  noteworthy 
forward  steps.  Year  by  year  the  seemingly 
fixed  sectarian  barriers  are  being  removed. 
Just  now  a  distinguished  English  Congrega- 
tional minister  has  received  and  accepted  a 
call  to  one  of  the  leading  Presbyterian  churches 
of  this  city,  and  a  Baptist  preacher  of  excep- 
tional power  is  about  to  make  the  transition 
to  Congregationalism  without  any  theological 
catechizing  whatsoever.  Sunday  evening  meet- 
ings under  the  auspices  of  Unitarian,  Universal- 
ist  and  Reformed  Jewish  societies  furnish  further 
illustration  of  the  new  spirit  and  tendency  in  the 
religious  world,  albeit  that  these  meetings  are 
devoted  exclusively  to  social  questions  and  that 
the  religious  differences  are  religiously  ignored. 

31 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

Who  knows  but  that  through  this  medium 
the  sectarian  sores,  which,  when  touched,  al- 
ways cause  the  sectarian  nerves  to  respond, 
will  be  healed,  leaving  not  even  a  scar  to  indi- 
cate and  recall  the  conflicting  creeds.  Nobler 
than  the  unity  which  is  "Christian"  or  "Jew- 
ish" is  the  non-sectarian  unity  which  is  Hu- 
man and  which  extends  the  amenities  of  a 
platform  for  the  promotion  of  civic  righteous- 
ness to  one  for  the  realization  of  religious 
brotherhood.  It  is  not  enough  to  be  brothers 
and  sisters  "in  Christ";  we  must  be  brothers 
and  sisters  in  Humanity  with  all  the  rest  of 
mankind.  Nor  is  the  advent  of  such  a  non- 
sectarian  brotherhood,  standing  for  fraternity 
in  freedom,  an  empty,  baseless  dream.  Just 
as  fast  as  men  and  women  of  all  persuasions 
grow  to  care  more  for  the  triumph  of  truth 
than  they  do  for  sectarian  victory;  as  fast 
as  they  learn  to  attach  a  higher  value  to 
spiritual  freedom  than  to  tradition  and  adher- 
ence to  creed  or  custom,  so  fast  will  the  world 
witness  that  finest  of  all  religious  fellowships, 
which  lifts  it  above  all  differences  of  creed, 

32 


SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST 

color,  class  and  race,  to  the  sublime  plane  of 
that  Universal  Religion  which  we  are  just  be- 
ginning to  understand. 

Herder,  the  German  dramatist  and  Biblical 
critic,  once  compared  the  religions  of  mankind 
to  the  strings  of  a  harp,  each  of  which  gives 
forth  its  own  particular  note,  and  the  harmon- 
ious blending  of  all  the  notes  producing  a 
veritable  symphony  of  religions. 

In  this  course  of  lectures  we  shall  listen  to 
the  individual  notes  which  the  founders  of  six 
of  the  world's  great  religious  systems  have  con- 
tributed to  the  symphony  of  religions.  And 
since  each  one  of  the  six  *' notes"  is  ethical 
rather  than  theological,  since  the  prime  con- 
cern of  these  founders  was  not  with  theological 
changes  so  much  as  with  moral  reform  in  the 
field  of  religion,  we  shall  fix  our  attention  upon 
their  function  as  great  moral  leaders,  touching 
only  incidentally  on  their  respective  theologi- 
cal positions  and  claims. 


33 


II 

GOTAMA,  THE  BUDDHA 


II 

GOTAMA,  THE  BUDDHA 

/^UR  study  of  the  great  religious  teachers  of 
the  East  begins  with  the  Hfe  and  message 
of  one  who  was  born  in  India  nearly  twenty -five 
centuries  ago. 

India  is  a  vast  country,  to  be  compared,  not 
with  Germany,  or  France,  or  Spain,  but  only 
with  Europe  itself,  for  India  is  as  large  as  all 
Europe, '^excluding  only  Russia.  Forty  cen- 
turies ago  this  vast  country  was  inhabited 
by  a  variety  of  ferocious  tribes  who  were  gradu- 
ally conquered  by  a  new  and  warlike  people 
from  beyond  the  Himalayas,  on  the  table- 
lands of  central  Asia.  These  invaders  called 
themselves  "Aryas,"  i.e.  lordly  or  worthy 
ones.  They  were  gifted  with  poetic  imagina- 
tion, memory,  language,  keen  intellectuality 
and,  above  all,  with  a  strong  religious  instinct. 
While  still  a  migratory  people,  prior  to  their 
invasion  of  India,  they  had  composed  hymns 

37 


•> 


93813 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

(Vedas)  in  honor  of  the  personified  forces  of 
Nature,  to  be  sung  as  an  accompaniment  to 
the  sacrifice  of  "soma "-juice  and  melted 
butter ;  —  the  singing  and  the  sacrifice  con- 
stituting their  only  forms  of  worship.  These 
unsophisticated  observers  of  Nature  believed 
that  within  or  behind  every  visible  phenome- 
non there  resided  a  Power  responsible  for  all 
that  occurs  in  connection  with  it  and  capable 
of  affecting  the  life  of  man  and  beast  for 
good  or  ill.  Hence  the  personification  and 
worship  of  these  powers  as  manifested  in  the 
various  forces  and  phenomena  of  Nature.  At 
first  there  were  only  a  few  of  these  gods,  but 
with  the  rise  of  distinctions  such  as  that  of 
"Bhaga,"  the  sun  before  sunrise,  "Surya,"  the 
risen  sun,  and  "Savitri,"  the  creating  sun,  the 
number  of  these  personifications  increased 
and,  therefore,  also,  the  number  of  sacrifices. 
It  would  carry  us  too  far  afield  to  trace  the 
development  of  this  primitive  polytheism  and 
worship.  Suffice  it  to  note  that  out  of  the  origi- 
nal Aryan  religion,  with  its  simple  "Vedic" 
hymns  and  sacrifices,  there  was  evolved,  by  the 

38 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

year    1000    B.C.,    an    immense   pantheon,    an 
elaborate   ceremonial,    an   ecclesiastical   hier- 
archy, a  caste  system  and  a  doctrine  of  the 
infallibility  of  the  Vedas.     Between  the  years 
1000  and  500  B.C.,  religion  in  the  valley  of  the 
Ganges   (whither  the  descendants  of  the  in- 
vading Aryas  had  migrated  from  the  valley  of 
the  Indus)  was  marked  by  excessive  devotion 
to  the  externalities  of  worship,  by  absorption 
in  theological   speculation  and  by  the  solid 
entrenchment  of  the  caste  system  in  the  na- 
tional life.   And  this  was  "Brahmanism.'*   But, 
as  always  happens  w^here  a  people  becomes  so 
engrossed  in  theology  and  ritual  as  to  mistake 
theories  and  forms  of  religion  for  its  essence,  a 
reaction  occurs,  —  away  from  ceremonies  and 
speculations,  to  personal  morality  and  service. 
Indeed,  religious  reform  usually  signifies,  not 
that  fault  has  been  found  with  the  ritual  as 
such,  but  that  the  moral  issues  of  life  have 
suffered  eclipse. 

Precisely  such  a  reform  was  inaugurated  in 
India  about  the  year  500  B.C.  when  Gotama 
(reared  in  that  "Brahmanism"  which  grew 

39 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

out  of  the  primitive  "Vedism")  led  a  reac- 
tionary ethical  movement,  to  be  eventually 
known  as  "Buddhism."  So  successful  was 
the  reform-work  of  this  great  moral  leader 
that  within  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  his 
death  what  he  stood  for  became  the  state 
religion  of  India.  Then  followed  a  long,  bitter, 
obstinate  struggle  between  Buddhism  and 
Brahmanism  for  the  religious  control  of  In- 
dia, resulting  in  a  counter-reformation  of  the 
latter  and  the  complete  expulsion  of  the 
former  from  India,  to  Ceylon  and  the  islands  of 
the  Indian  archipelago,  whence  it  found  its  way 
to  China,  Thibet,  Japan  and  other  countries, 
there  undergoing  strange  and  varied  trans- 
formations. Thus  there  occurred  in  ancient 
India  a  prototype  of  the  Protestant  Reforma- 
tion and  the  Roman  Catholic  counter-reforma- 
tion. For  just  as  Martin  Luther  protested 
against  certain  evils  in  the  Romanism  in  which 
he  had  been  reared  and  in  which  he  died,  so 
Gotama  inveighed  against  kindred  evils  in 
the  Brahmanism  in  which  he  had  been  reared 
and    in    which   he    died.     And    precisely    as 

40 


GOTAMA. 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

Luther's  reform  was  followed  by  a  counter- 
reformation  within  Romanism  itself,  led  by 
Loyola  and  resulting  in  the  reestablishment 
of  its  lost  prestige,  so  after  Gotama's  death 
Brahmanism  underwent  reform  and  succeeded 
in  reinstating  itself  in  India  even  to  the  entire 
exclusion  of  its  rival. 

The  purpose  of  what  has  been  thus  far  said 
is  to  provide  the  necessary  setting  for  our  study 
of  Gotama's  work,  to  indicate  his  place  in  the 
history  of  religion  in  ancient  India,  to  show 
the  precise  part  he  played  in  effecting  the  tran- 
sition from  Brahmanism  to  Buddhism  and  the 
particular  field  in  which  he  gained  distinction 
as  one  of  the  great  moral  leaders  of  the  Orient. 

There  were  many  "Buddhas"  in  ancient 
India,  just  as  there  were  many  *'Christs" 
in  ancient  Palestine.  The  word  "Buddha," 
like  the  word  "Christ,"  is  not  the  name  of  a 
man,  but  the  title  of  an  oflSce.  Buddha  means 
"enlightened"  and  Christ  means  "anointed." 
Jesus  was  called  the  Christ  because  it  was 
believed  by  certain  Judean  contemporaries  that 
he  was  the  long-expected  "anointed  one"  who 

41 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

would  deliver  Israel  from  the  hand  of  the  op- 
pressor and  restore  the  prosperity  and  peace 
of  David's  day.  Jesus,  they  thought,  was  the 
"Messiah,"  and  "Christ"  is  but  the  Greek 
equivalent  for  the  Hebrew  "Messiah."  Simi- 
larly Gotama  was  called  "the  Buddha"  be- 
cause it  was  believed  that  he  had  shed  new 
light  on  the  path  of  salvation  and  therefore 
was  worthy  to  be  called  "the  enlightened 
one."  Other  names  by  which  he  is  known  in 
literature  are  the  following:  "Siddhartha," 
the  name  given  him  by  his  father  and  signify- 
ing one  in  whom  wishes  are  fulfilled;  "Bhaga- 
vat,"  fortunate  or  blessed;  "Tathagata,"  as 
his  predecessors ;  "  ^akya-muni,"  monk  of  the 
Cakya  tribe.  He  was  born  about  550  B.C.  in 
Kapilavastu,  a  small  town  eighty  miles  north 
of  Benares,  in  the  valley  of  the  Ganges,  the 
hottest  civilized  land  on  the  globe,  home  of 
that  pessimism  which  has  ever  been  charac- 
teristic of  Brahmanic  and  Buddhistic  thought. 
Here  climate,  environment  and  economic  con- 
ditions conspire  to  breed  philosophical  pessi- 
mism.    Nowhere  else  in  the  world  does  Nature 

42 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

exhibit  so  malignant  a  mien.  Here  floods  do 
their  devastating  work  upon  farms  and  homes ; 
here  drought,  lasting  in  the  monsoon  time  for 
six  months  or  more,  is  followed  by  famine, 
cholera  and  plague ;  here  pythons  and  venom- 
ous snakes  annually  decimate  the  population, 
while  tigers  claim  their  victims  by  the  thou- 
sand. Small  wonder  that  here  the  belief 
should  obtain  that  life  is  essentially  evil  and 
to  be  somehow  escaped.  Great  wonder  it  is 
that  this  Aryan  stock  should  remain  to  this 
day,  despite  their  inimical  environment,  a  most 
remarkable  people;  that  though  their  bodies 
suffer  from  dyspepsia,  dysentery,  diabetes  and 
various  forms  of  hysteria,  their  mentality  has 
not  suffered,  but  gives  promise  of  working  out 
the  tremendous  social,  political  and  economic 
problems  of  the  country. 

The  story  of  Gotama's  life  has  been  delight- 
fully told  by  Sir  Edwin  Arnold,  in  his  "Light 
of  Asia,"  a  poetical  version  which,  while  mak- 
ing free  use  of  legendary  material,  presents  the 
man  and  his  message  in  such  wise  that  the 
reader  readily  orients  himself  and  enters  into 

43 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

the  thought,  aim  and  spirit  of  the  great  re- 
former. 

We  shall  not  have  time  to  analyze  this  classic 
and,  by  reference  to  the  original  documents, 
separate  the  legendary  from  the  historical 
portions  of  the  narrative.  Suffice  it  merely  to 
state  that  the  "higher  criticism"  of  the  Bud- 
dhist Scriptures  —  the  ultimate  source  of  in- 
formation on  which  all  biographers  draw  —  is 
still  at  work  on  the  task  of  determining  how 
much  of  what  is  there  recorded  can  be  ac- 
cepted as  trustworthy,  just  as  in  the  case  of  the 
gospels  of  the  New  Testament  the  higher  criti- 
cism is  engaged  in  a  corresponding  problem 
touching  what  may  be  believed  concerning 
Jesus. 

Born  into  the  "ruler"  caste,  which,  together 
with  the  priestly,  warrior  and  laborer  castes, 
constituted  the  original  four  divisions  of  the 
system,  the  young  Gotama  was  reared  under 
most  favorable  conditions,  provided  with  all 
that  wealth  and  social  position  could  supply 
and  shielded  to  the  utmost  possible  extent 
from  acquaintance  with  unpleasant  or  painful 

44 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

experiences.  But,  one  day,  so  the  story  goes, 
while  driving  in  the  royal  park  he  saw  in  quick 
succession  three  most  pitiable  and  distressing 
sights.  First,  an  aged  man,  feeble,  trembling, 
tottering  helplessly  to  the  ground.  Next, 
the  victim  of  a  loathsome  leprous  disease,  hid- 
eous to  behold.  And  then,  a  funeral  proces- 
sion. Returning  home  at  once,  Gotama  re- 
solved to  find  a  way  of  escape  from  infirm  old 
age,  disease  and  death.  The  third  book  of 
the  "Light  of  Asia"  closes  with  a  graphic  de- 
scription of  this  resolve,  the  intense,  passionate 
yearning  with  which  this  youth  of  twenty -three 
faced  the  task  he  set  himself  to  fulfil. 

"  Oh,  suffering  world ; 
Oh,  known  and  unknown  of  my  common  flesh, 
Caught  in  this  common  net  of  death  and  woe, 
And  life  which  binds  to  both  !     I  see,  I  feel, 
The  vastness  of  the  agony  of  earth, 
The  vainness  of  its  joys,  the  anguish  of  its  worst ; 
Since  pleasures  end  in  pain,  and  youth  in  age. 
And  love  in  loss,  and  life  in  hateful  death, 
And  death  in  unknown  lives,  which  will  but  yoke 
Men  to  their  wheel  again  to  whirl  the  round 
Of  false  delights  and  woes  that  are  not  false. 
Me  too  this  lure  hath  cheated,  so  it  seemed 

45 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

Lovely  to  live,  and  life  a  sunlit  stream 
Forever  flowing  in  a  changeless  peace ; 
Whereas  the  foolish  ripple  of  the  flood 
Dances  so  lightly  down  by  bloom  and  lawn 
Only  to  pour  its  crystal  quicklier 
Into  the  foul  salt  sea.     The  veil  is  rent 
Which  blinded  me.     I  am  as  all  these  men 
Who  cry  upon  their  gods  and  are  not  heard, 
Or  are  not  heeded  —  yet  there  must  be  aid  ! 
For  them  and  me  and  all  there  must  be  help  ! 
Perchance  the  gods  have  need  of  help  themselves, 
Being  so  feeble  that  when  sad  lips  cry 
They  cannot  save  !     I  would  not  let  one  cry 
Whom  I  could  save.     How  can  it  be  that  Brahm 
Would  make  a  world  and  keep  it  miserable, 
Since,  if,  all-powerful,  he  leaves  it  so. 
He  is  not  good,  and  if  not  powerful. 
He  is  not  God." 

And  so,  under  the  spell  of  these  philosophical 
reflections  Gotama  went  forth,  leaving  wife 
and  child,  to  find  the  coveted  way  of  escape. 
For  six  years  he  was  a  homeless  wanderer, 
going  from  one  hermit  to  another,  hoping 
thus  to  acquire  the  practical  knowledge  that 
would  save  mankind.  Such  procedure  seems 
strange  to  us,  but  we  must  remember  that  in 
those  days  there  were  no  printed  books  by 
which  one  could  come  in  touch  with  scholar- 

46 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

ship.  One's  only  resource  was  to  visit  the 
recluses  who  had  retired  to  their  respective 
"retreats"  to  work  out  their  problems  in 
philosophy  and  religion.  This,  indeed,  was  a 
common  practice  of  the  time  among  the  various 
sects  of  the  country,  climate  and  environment 
lending  themselves  exceptionally  well  to  forest 
meditation  and  study.  But  the  conviction 
was  at  last  borne  in  upon  Gotama  that  these 
intellectual  searchings  brought  no  solution  for 
his  problem.  Philosophical  speculation,  he 
concluded,  is  not  the  medium  through  which 
the  needed  light  can  shine.  He  then  turned 
to  asceticism,  in  accordance  with  an  ancient 
oriental  belief  that  starvation  is  conducive 
to  mentality;  the  less  one  eats  the  more  vigor- 
ous and  keen  one's  power  to  think.  Self- 
mortification,  it  was  believed,  superinduces  a 
thought-power  so  great  as  to  elicit  from  the 
gods  a  revelation  of  the  truth.  But  after 
faithful,  prolonged  devotion  to  the  ascetic 
life,  even  to  the  verge  of  physical  collapse, 
Gotama  concluded  that  not  by  this  ave- 
nue any  more  than  by  that  of  speculation 

47 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

can   one    hope   to   reach    a   solution    of   the 
problem. 

Finally,  while  seated  one  day  in  deep  medita- 
tion under  a  lotus-tree,  since  known  as  the 
"bodhi"  (enlightenment)  tree,  the  long-sought 
solution  came,  and  it  was  promptly  developed 
into  an  orderly,  systematic  body  of  beliefs  and 
precepts.  Gathering  about  him  a  small  band 
of  disciples,  Gotama,  for  the  remaining  forty- 
five  years  of  his  life,  devoted  himself  to 
preaching  and  spreading  his  gospel  until,  at  the 
ripe  old  age  of  eighty  years,  he  died,  leaving  to 
his  immediate  followers  the  task  of  continuing 
the  missionary  work  so  successfully  begun. 
Thus,  while  Heraclitus  and  Pythagoras  in 
Greece  were  shaping  their  philosophies,  while 
Nehemiah  and  his  associates  were  reorganizing 
the  Hebrew  nation  in  Jerusalem  after  the  Baby- 
lonian captivity,  while  Confucius  was  ful- 
filling the  part  of  statesman  and  moralist  in 
China,  the  founder  of  Buddhism  was  protest- 
ing against  certain  errors  and  evils  in  the  Brah- 
manism  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up  and 
supplementing    his    protest  with    a    positive, 

48 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

constructive  gospel  of  escape  from  a  world  in 
which  suffering,  sorrow,  disease  and  death 
were  the  common  lot. 

The  simple  ceremonial  of  "Vedism"  had 
developed  into  an  elaborate  and  expensive 
ritual.  Asceticism  had  come  to  be  regarded 
as  a  virtue  of  the  highest  type  and  even  a  pro- 
gramme of  physical  austerities  had  been  worked 
out.  The  caste  system  had  grown  increasingly 
and  obnoxiously  exclusive.  Speculation  on 
the  hereafter  had  become  so  engrossing  as  to 
cause  neglect  of  the  practical  humanities. 
Nay,  more,  the  popular  philosophy  of  the  period 
was  found  to  be  defective,  so  that  the  hope 
of  salvation  rested  on  insecure  foundations. 
Against  these  features  of  the  religion  into  which 
he  was  born  Gotama  now  registered  his  pro- 
test. He  denounced  the  costly  ritual  as  waste- 
ful and  unethical.  He  repudiated  asceticism 
as  a  practice  inimical  to  the  health  of  both 
body  and  mind.  He  pronounced  the  caste 
system  degrading  and  undemocratic.  Intel- 
lectual speculation  on  the  finale  of  man's 
career,  he  deprecated  as  being  both  futile  and 
K  49 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

unwarranted.  The  belief  in  the  existence  of 
"Brahma,"  —  a  permanent  and  supreme 
Power,  the  soul  of  the  universe, — the  belief  in 
the  existence  of  a  "soul"  in  man,  as  an  entity, 
capable  of  transmigration  at  death,  the  belief 
in  man's  ultimate  absorption  into  "Brahma," 
—  all  these  theological  beliefs  he  regarded  as 
superstitions,  unworthy  the  support  of  en- 
lightened people.  Such,  in  brief,  was  the  pro- 
test of  Gotama  on  its  negative  side  and  had  it 
ended  there,  no  Buddhism  would  have  been 
born.  For  no  movement  can  ever  live  that  is 
built  solely  upon  negations.  No  future  ever 
awaits  a  cause  grounded  upon  iconoclasm. 
Every  religious  system  that  survives  and  per- 
petuates itself  does  so  only  on  the  basis  of 
its  affirmations.  Nor  have  we  a  more  con- 
spicuous contemporary  instance  of  this  truth 
than  that  furnished  by  the  Ethical  Culture 
Movement  itself.  Thirty-four  years  ago  its 
distinguished  founder  supplemented  a  series 
of  emphatic  protests  against  current  beliefs 
and  practices,  with  a  positive,  constructive 
programme,  putting  something  in  the  place  of 

50 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

everything  he  took  away.  And  to  this,  its 
affirmative  gospel,  the  Movement  owes  its 
life. 

Similarly  the  survival  of  Buddhism  would 
have  been  impossible  but  for  the  genius  of  its 
founder  in  following  up  his  series  of  negations 
with  a  corresponding  set  of  affirmations.  In 
place  of  a  dry  and  forbidding  ritual  he  offered 
a  fervent  and  inspiring  morality.  For  as- 
ceticism and  sensualism  alike,  he  substituted 
temperance,  adding  to  the  persuasive  eloquence 
with  which  he  preached  it,  the  more  potent 
influence  of  personal  example.  To  do  away 
with  the  degrading  and  undemocratic  caste 
system  he  proposed  the  ennobling,  inclusive 
doctrine  of  brotherhood.  For  vain  specula-, 
tion  on  insoluble  questions  he  substituted  a 
practical  course  in  ethical  self -discipline.  The 
belief  in  the  infallibility  of  the  Vedas,  he 
surrendered  in  favor  of  belief  in  enlightened 
reason  as  our  safest  guide.  As  against  the 
notion  that  the  gods  can  influence  human 
affairs,  he  took  the  ground  that  the  gods,  no 
less    than    men,    are    subject    to    the   law   of 

51 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

"Karma"  and  that  far  from  having  his  fate 
determined  by  the  dictum  of  any  god,  man 
has  the  determination  of  his  fate  in  his  own 
hands,  in  strict  accordance  with  that  law. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  interpretation  of 
this  law,  let  me  confirm  what  has  just  been  said 
concerning  the  constructive  gospel  of  Gotama 
by  a  few  citations  from  the  "Pitakas,"  the 
fountain-source  of  information  on  Buddhism, 
precisely  as  the  New  Testament  is  the  foun- 
tain-source of  information  on  Christianity. 
The  word  "Pitakas"  means  baskets  and  as  here 
used  refers  to  those  archseological  excavations 
which  are  conducted  with  the  aid  of  baskets 
handed  on  from  workman  to  workman  stand- 
ing in  a  long  line  from  the  spot  whence  the 
earth  is  removed  to  that  where  it  is  deposited 
for  examination.  So  a  long  line  of  teachers 
and  pupils  have  handed  on  the  treasures  of 
Buddhistic  teaching  in  "Pitakas"  of  which 
there  are  three,  the  Vinaya,  or  rules  of  dis- 
cipline for  the  order  of  monks,  the  Dhamma,  or 
the  ethical  sermons  preached  by  Gotama,  and 
the  Abhiddamma,   or   the   metaphysical   and 

52 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

psychological  background  of  this  ethical  teach- 
ing. Like  the  Vedas  the  Pitakas  were  trans- 
mitted orally  for  centuries,  trained  repeaters 
memorizing  and  transmitting  them,  until  250 
B.C.,  when  King  Asoka  ordered  them  to  be 
committed  to  writing.  The  quotations  se- 
lected indicate  the  views  of  Gotama  on  the 
caste  system,  asceticism,  temperance  and  re- 
liance on  reason  as  contrasted  with  external 
authority  and  tradition  :  — 

"My  doctrine  makes  no  distinction  between 
high  and  low,  rich  and  poor,  it  is  like  the  sky, 
n;-    it  has  room  for  all  and  like  water  it  washes  all 
IX'    alike. 

|u^  *'  Ananda  coming  to  a  well  asked  a  girl  of  the 
*  ^  despised  caste  of  the  Tschandalas  for  a  drink  of 
^  water.  But  she,  fearing  a  gift  from  her  hands 
would  make  him  unclean,  declined.  Where- 
upon Ananda  said :  My  sister,'  I  did  not  ask 
concerning  thy  caste  or  thy  family,  I  beg  water 
of  thee  if  thou  canst  give  it  to  me.  To  him  in 
whom  love  dwells  the  whole  world  is  but  one 
family.  Hatred  is  never  overcome  by  hatred, 
this  is  an  ancient  rule.     The  greatest  victor  is 

53 


J- 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

he  who  conquers  himself.  Overcome  evil  with 
good  and  lying  with  truth.  As  the  lotus-flower 
rises  immaculate  from  the  muddy  water  of  the 
marsh,  so  a  man  may  rise  from  the  impurity  of 
the  surrounding  world.  Not  abstinence  from 
fish  or  meat,  not  wearing  rough  garments,  not 
offering  sacrifices,  can  make  a  man  pure.  Your 
low  desires  are  in  you  and  you  make  your 
outside  clean. 

"And  the  Blessed  One  thus  addressed  the  five 
Bhikkhus  (disciples) :  There  are  two  extremes,  * 
O  Bhikkhus,  which  he  who  has  given  up  the 
world  ought  to  avoid.  What  are  these  two 
extremes  ^  A  life  given  to  pleasures  and  lusts, 
for  this  is  degrading,  sensual,  vulgar;  and  a 
life  given  to  mortifications,  for  this  is  painful, 
ignoble,  and  profitless.  By  avoiding  these 
two  extremes,  O  Bhikkhus,  the  Tathagata  has 
gained  the  knowledge  of  the  Middle  Path  which 
leads  to  insight,  which  leads  to  wisdom,  which 
conduces  to  calm,  to  knowledge,  to  Nirvana. 

*'  And  the  Blessed  One,  calling  his  disciples 
unto  him,  delivered  unto  them  this  command- 
ment :  — 

54 


♦  • 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

**Go  ye  forth,  O  brethren,  and  wander  over 
the  world,  for  the  sake  of  the  many,  for  the 
welfare  of  the  many,  out  of  compassion  for  the 
world,  for  the  good  and  the  weal  and  the  gain  of 
gods  and  men.  .  .  .  Proclaim  the  teaching 
lovely  in  its  origin,  lovely  in  its  progress,  and 
lovely  in  its  consummation,  both  in  the  spirit 
and  in  the  letter.  Set  forth  the  higher  life  in 
all  its  fulness  and  in  all  its  purity. 

*'Be  ye  lamps  unto  yourselves,  betake  your- 
selves to  no  external  refuge.  Hold  fast  to  the 
truth  as  a  lamp,  hold  fast  as  a  refuge  to  the 
truth.  Whosoever  shall  be  a  lamp  unto  them- 
selves, looking  not  for  refuge  to  any  one  besides 
themselves,  it  is  they  who  shall  reach  the  top- 
most height. 

"  Behold  now.  I  exhort  you,  brethren  :  work 
out  your  own  salvation  with  diligence."  This 
was  the  last  word  of  the  Blessed  One.^ 

Karma  and  reincarnation  connote  ideas  com- 
mon to  both  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism  and 
are  inseparably  associated  in  their  respective 
theories  of  human  progress.     Without  paus- 

^  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  Vol.  X,  p.  146  sq. 
55 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

ing  to  differentiate  these  theories,  let  it  suffice 
simply  to  indicate  the  source  of  the  belief  in 
reincarnation.  It  derives  directly  from  the 
Vedic  religion  of  the  primitive  Aryans.  Specu- 
lating on  death  and  what  comes  after  death,  the 
successors  of  the  poet-priests  who  composed 
the  "Rig- Veda"  could  not  find  entire  satisfac- 
tion in  their  conception  of  future  reward  as 
immortal  residence  among  the  gods  in  para- 
dise. They  grew  sceptical  and  nervous  about 
the  continuance  of  their  life  in  heaven.  What 
if  the  good  deeds  done  on  earth  warrant  only  a 
limited  life  of  bliss  among  the  gods  ^  What 
if,  over  there,  instead  of  eternal  life  there  be 
death  again,  the  good  deeds  having  only  tem- 
porary value  and  not  guaranteeing  immor- 
tality at  all  .^  In  that  case  there  will  surely  be 
death  again,  and  if  man  can  die  in  heaven  once, 
why  not  many  times  ?  From  such  reflections 
it  was  but  a  single  step  to  the  belief  that 
the  law  of  compensation  operates,  not  in  the 
unknown  heaven,  but  here  on  the  familiar 
earth,  death  and  rebirth  occurring  again  and 
again  until  sin  and  virtue  have  adequately  and 

56 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

completely  received  their  respective  punish- 
ment and  reward,  each  death  followed  by  re- 
birth into  a  condition  determined  by  the  net 
result  of  conduct  in  all  earlier  lives.  Thus  in 
the  course  of  practically  endless  reincarnations 
the  average  man  gets  his  deserts,  until  at  last 
there  is  release  from  the  round  of  deaths  and 
rebirths.  And  this  is  salvation  or  "Nirvana," 
the  cessation  of  rebirth  into  an  evil,  sorrowing, 
suffering,  death-destined  world. 

In  the  evolution  of  this  theory  of  reincarna- 
tion the  doctrine  of  Karma  played  an  indispen- 
sable and  inalienable  part.  For  Karma  means 
not  only  deed,  but  also  the  effect  of  deed  on  the 
subsequent  character  of  the  doer.  The  think- 
ing and  the  thought,  the  doing  and  the  act,  all 
pass  away,  but  not  without  leaving  enduring 
traces  on  the  character.  These  are  called 
"samskaras"  i.e.  deed-structures,  the  direct 
product  of  Karma.  Actions  are  like  seeds  that 
bear  fruit,  some  early,  some  late,  in  the  course 
of  man's  successive  rebirths. 

For,  according  to  Buddhistic  belief,  as  we 
have  just  seen,  when  a  man  dies,  he  is  reborn 

57 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

into  precisely  the  condition  he  has  deserved  as 
a  result  of  his  conduct  in  earlier  lives,  and  he 
continues  to  be  reborn  until  he  has  been  fully 
punished  for  every  sin  and  fully  rewarded  for 
every  virtue.  Every  act  produces  its  sams- 
kara  and  the  preservation  of  the  samskaras 
makes  rebirth  possible,  Karma  being  the  mj^s^ 
terious  law  which  binds  each  life  to  the  one  next 
preceding  it.  Moreover,  no  one  has  any  recol- 
lection of  a  previous  existence,  and  therefore 
no  one  has  any  knowledge  as  to  how  his  moral 
account  stands  or  as  to  what  his  next  incarna- 
tion will  be.  But  let  him  live  the  unselfish 
life,  let  him  undergo  a  systematic  course  of 
self-discipline  such  as  the  Buddha  outlined, 
and  after  successive  reincarnations,  he  will 
have  "squared"  his  moral  account  and  for  him 
rebirth  will  cease.  Thus  by  a  process  of 
"automatic,  psychic  evolution"  man  reaches 
at  last  the  state  called  "Nirvana,"  saved  for- 
ever after  from  the  possibility  of  rebirth. 

Such,  in  brief,  bare  outline  is  the  exoteric 
doctrine  of  Karma  and  reincarnation,  as  taught 
by  Gotama.     Exoteric,  not  esoteric,  it  most 

58 


GOTAMA,     THE    BUDDHA 

assuredly  was.  Not  veiled,  but  naked  truth 
did  he  wish  to  teach,  as  is  clearly  and  conclu- 
sively proved  by  the  following  passage  from 
that  part  of  the  "Pitakas"  called  the  "Book 
of  the  Great  Decease,"  a  passage  that  shows 
how  misleading  is  the  notion  to  which  A.  P. 
Sinnett  gave  currency  in  his  "Esoteric  Bud- 
dhism." 

"I  have  preached  the  truth  without  making 
any  distinction  between  exoteric  and  esoteric 
doctrine ;  for  in  respect  of  the  truth,  Ananda, 
the  Tathagata  has  no  such  thing  as  the  closed 
fist  of  a  teacher  who  keeps  some  things  back. 
It  may  be,  brethren,  that  there  may  be  doubt 
or  misgiving  in  the  mind  of  some  brother  as  to 
the  Buddha,  or  the  truth,  or  the  path.  En- 
quire freely,  brethren,  do  not  have  to  reproach 
yourselves  afterwards  with  the  thought,  our 
teacher  was  face  to  face  with  us  and  we  failed 
to  enquire  of  the  Blessed  One  when  we  were 
thus  face  to  face  with  him."  ^ 

In  the  one  hundred  and  eighty-six  dialogues 
that  have  come  down  to  us,  his  theory  of  sal- 

1  Sacred  Books  of  the  East.  Vol.  XI,  pp.  36,  113. 

59 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

vation  is  fully  expounded,  and  to  these  I  must 
refer  you  for  details  upon  which  time  fails  me 
to  touch.  Fundamental  to  his  scheme  of 
salvation  is  acceptance  and  appreciation  of 
"the  four  noble  truths."  However  much 
Buddhists  may  differ  on  other  points,  they  all 
are  agreed  on  these.  To  quote  the  language  of 
Gotama  as  recorded  in  the  Pitakas :  "It  is 
through  not  understanding  and  grasping  four 
noble  truths,  O  brethren,  that  we  have  had  to 
run  so  long,  to  wander  so  long  in  this  weary 
path  of  reincarnation,  both  you  and  I.  And 
what  are  these  four  ? 

"  First :  The  noble  truth  about  suffering. 
Birth  is  painful,  disease  is  painful,  death  is 
painful,  contact  wuth  the  unpleasant  is  painful 
and  painful  is  separation  from  the  pleasant. 

"  Second  :  The  noble  truth  about  the  cause 
of  suffering.  Verily  it  is  this  thirst  or  craving, 
causing  the  renewal  of  existence,  the  craving 
for  the  gratification  of  the  passions,  or  the 
craving  for  a  future  life,  or  for  success  in  this 
life. 

"  Third  :  The  noble  truth  of  the  cessation  of 

60 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

suffering.     Verily  it  is  the  quenching  of  this 
very  thirst,  the  laying  aside  of  this  thirst. 

"  Fourth :  The  noble  truth  concerning  the 
'path  that  leads  to  the  cessation  of  suffering. 
Verily  it  is  the  noble  eightfold  path,  viz.  :  — 

"1.  Right  views:  free  from  superstition  or 
delusion. 

"  2.  Right  aims :  high  and  worthy  of  an  in- 
telligent, earnest  man. 

"  3.  Right  speech  :  kindly,  open,  truthful. 

"  4.  Right  conduct :  peaceful,  honest,  pure. 

"  5.  Right  livelihood  :  bringing  hurt  or  dan- 
ger to  no  living  thing. 

"6.  Right  effort :  in  self -training  or  in  self- 
control. 

"  7.  Right  mindfulness  :  the  active,  watchful 
mind. 

"8.  Right  contemplation :  earnest  thought 
on  the  deep  mysteries  of  life,"  —  Karma,  Sams- 
karas,  etc. 

How  tame  and  prosaic  this  list  must  have 
seemed  to  a  people  steeped  in  ceremonialism, 
fasting  and  penances  !  How  tame  and  pro- 
saic, perchance,  it  appears  to  us  unless  we 

61 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

happen  to  know  all  that  is  involved  in  each  of 
the  eight  steps  on  "the  noble  path."  As  an 
index  of  their  wealth  of  ethical  and  philosophi- 
cal content  let  me  synopsize  the  first  of  the 
eight,  "Right  Views,"  as  expounded  at  length 
in  the  forty-third  dialogue  and,  more  briefly, 
in  the  ninth.  The  man  of  right  views  is  free 
from  superstition,  free  from  erroneous  theories 
of  the  world,  God  and  the  soul.  He  realizes 
the  impermanence  of  everything  and  of  every 
being,  whether  human  or  divine.  He  knows 
that  nothing  permanently  is,  that  everything 
becomes,  that  the  world-stuff  is  eternal,  that 
out  of  it  all  things  and  beings  came,  we  know 
not  how ;  and  that  it  is  a  foolish  waste  of  time 
to  try  to  find  out,  because  the  main  concern  of 
men  should  be  to  attain  "Arahatship,"  that 
blessed  state  attainable,  here  on  earth,  in 
which,  as  a  result  of  faithful  allegiance  to  the 
eightfold  noble  path  one  is  prepared  for  Nir- 
vana and  saved  from  the  possibility  of  rebirth. 
The  man  of  right  views  understands  that  while 
it  is  legitimate  to  argue  from  one  cause  to 
the  next,  he  cannot  hope  to  reach  an  ultimate 

62 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

cause.  Life  he  knows  is  a  wheel,  causation  a 
chain,  beginning  with  ignorance,  "unconscious 
productive  ignorance"  (the  unconscious  "will 
to  live")  from  which  spring  consciousness,  sen- 
sation, thirst,  attachment,  birth,  suffering, 
old  age,  death,  rebirth;  Karma,  the  fruit  of 
one's  deeds,  being  the  link  that  binds  each  life 
with  its  predecessor.  The  man  of  right  views 
understands  that  there  is  no  reality  corre- 
sponding to  "soul"  as  a  permanent,  human 
entity,  and  that  the  notion  of  its  final  absorp- 
tion into  Brahma,  the  Oversoul,  is  also  erro- 
neous. For  this  latter,  he  knows  to  be  just 
as  unreal  as  the  soul.  Again,  the  man  of  right 
views  understands  what  is  evil  and  what  is  good 
and  the  roots  of  each.  He  knows  the  basis  of 
bodily  and  mental  life,  how  they  originate  and 
how  they  ultimately  cease.  As  a  result,  he 
gets  rid  of  sensuality  and  of  ill-will  toward 
others.  Moreover,  he  knows  what  suffering 
is,  its  cause  and  its  cessation,  how  it  is  bound 
up  with  the  temporary  individuality  that  re- 
sults from  the  evanescent  union  of  the  five 
"Skandas"  or  groups  of  qualities  that  make 

63 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

up  each  individual  (corporeity,  consciousness, 
sensations,  feelings,  desires).  He  knows  how 
sufferings  result  from  desire  and  how  it  ceases 
only  after  he  has  entered  on  the  eightfold 
noble  path  at  the  entrance  to  which  are  the 
four  noble  truths.  He  perceives  the  "fetters," 
or  failings,  all  of  which  are  sloughed  off  in 
*' Arahatship,"  the  vestibule  of  Nirvana.  And 
when  he  know*  all  this  his  insight  is  right,  his 
views  are  correct  and  the  man  is  endowed  with 
an  abiding  sense  of  truth. 

Thus  the  philosophy  of  Gotama  is  funda- 
mentally pessimistic.  The  world  is  evil  and 
the  problem  is  to  escape  rebirth  into  such  a 
world.  Behind  the  programme  of  ethical  self- 
discipline  lies  the  utilitarian  motive  of  escape, 
to  be  contrasted  with  that  higher  and  only 
worthy  motive,  viz.,  to  approximate  an  ideal 
that  gives  worth  to  life.  In  the  dialogue  on 
"Right  Aims"  Gotama  ranks  them  according 
to  their  relative  worth,  placing  mere  physical 
sustenance  lowest  in  the  scale  of  aims  and  rat- 
ing highest  of  all  the  emancipation  of  the  heart 
from  lust,  ill-will  and  all  forms  of  hatred  and 

64 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

selfishness.  And,  again,  by  "Right  Effort," 
he  did  not  mean  the  kind  that  insures  material 
success,  but  rather  a  steady,  persistent,  un- 
flagging endeavor  to  make  progress  in  the 
ethical  zone  of  our  being.  Differ  from  Gotama 
as  we  may,  in  his  theory  of  the  universe  and  of 
the  soul,  in  his  doctrine  of  Karma  and  rein- 
carnation and  in  the  pessimism  whence  these 
originate,  yet  when  he  aflSrms  that  to  live  the 
ethical  life  is  the  sole  and  certain  guarantee 
of  welfare  now  and  in  any  other  world  that 
may  await  us  we  all  respond  with  a  sincere  and 
hearty  "amen.'* 

So  bent  was  the  Buddha  on  turning  men's 
thoughts  away  from  fruitless  speculation  on 
the  location  and  nature  of  Nirvana  to  the  cry- 
ing needs  of  the  living  present  that  he  refused 
again  and  again  to  answer  the  question, 
Where  and  what  is  Nirvana  ?  Invariably  he 
pointed  to  the  path  that  leads  thither,  bidding 
the  inquirer  concentrate  upon  the  eight  pre- 
requisites of  salvation.  In  the  same  spirit 
and  from  a  like  motive  Jesus,  when  asked 
"Are   there   few   that    be    saved  ? "   replied, 

r  65 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

"Strive  to  enter  in.*'  Be  not  anxiously  con- 
cerned about  the  population  of  heaven,  but 
rather  seek  so  to  live  as  to  be  worthy  of  resi- 
dence there. 

Nowhere  in  the  "Pitakas"  do  we  find  Nir- 
vana defined  in  positive  terms.  Gotama's 
allusions  to  it,  as  recorded  in  the  Buddhist 
Bible,  are  all  negative.  No  wonder,  then,  that 
speculation  became  rife  as  to  the  meaning  he 
gave  the  word.  In  Sanskrit  and  Pali  diction- 
aries it  is  simply  a  generic  term  for  "salva- 
tion" and,  as  such,  admits  of  various  specific 
interpretations.  Childers  and  Oldenberg  are 
of  the  opinion  that  to  Gotama  Nirvana  meant 
annihilation.  Max  Miiller  contended  that  it 
described  an  "absolute  peace  of  soul  of  which 
the  repose  of  the  saint  is  a  foretaste.'*  Rhys- 
Davids  holds  that  the  term  signifies  a  perfec- 
tion to  be  attained  in  this  life  and  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  hereafter.  But  Gotama  gave 
out  no  positive  information,  describing  Nir- 
vana simply  as  that  blessed  state  in  which  re- 
birth is  forever  impossible.  This  much,  how- 
ever, we  are  warranted  in  saying :    if  there 

66 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

be  conscious  personal  survival  of  death,  then 
the  very  most  that  Nirvana  could  mean  for  us 
would  be  "a  temporary  resting-place  for  tired 
souls."  Once  rested  and  refreshed,  we  would 
wish  to  resume  our  climb,  for  life  is  not  static 
but  dynamic,  imperfect,  incomplete;  nor  is 
there  any  place  for  a  doctrine  of  rest  save  one 
that  is  harmonious  with  the  possibility  of  end- 
less growth  toward  that  image  of  the  perfect 
in  which  we  all  were  potentially  made.  Only 
such  a  spiritual  conception  of  life  can  be  worthy 
our  acceptance,  looking  on  each  new  height 
to  which  we  climb  as  only  the  vantage  ground 
from  which  we  ascend  to  some  higher  manifes- 
tation of  power,  the  spiritual  content  of  our  life 
enriched  and  deepened  with  every  new  alti- 
tude we  attain. 

Gotama's  aversion  to  discussing  Nirvana 
was  matched  by  his  distaste  for  dealing  with 
theism.  For  this,  too,  seemed  to  him  an  in- 
soluble problem.  So  far  as  the  Buddhism  of 
Gotama  is  concerned,  it  was  practically  athe- 
istic in  that  he  recognized  no  supreme  deity 
but  only  the  various  gods  of  the  Brahmanic 

67 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

pantheon  (Indra,  Agni,  Savitri,  etc.),  and  as 
these,  like  human  beings,  were  subject  to  the 
law  of  Karma  and  rebirth,  worship  of  them 
was  obviously  impossible.  "Better,"  he  said, 
"homage  to  a  man  grounded  in  the  Dhamma 
than  to  Agni  for  a  hundred  years."  The  place 
above  all  finite  deities  Gotama  left  vacant, 
holding  that  a  solution  of  the  theistic  problem 
lies  outside  the  pale  of  human  possibilities. 

Clearly,  then,  the  message  of  this  great  ori- 
ental leader  was  essentially  ethical,  practical, 
humanitarian.  And  this  is  all  the  more  ap- 
parent when  we  turn  to  his  ten  commandments. 
Comparing  them  with  the  Decalogue  of  the 
Old  Testament  we  note  :  — 

1.  *'  Ye  shall  slay  no  living  thing"  =  "thou 
shalt  not  kill." 

2.  "  Ye  shall  not  take  that  which  is  not 
given  "  =  "thou  shalt  not  steal." 

3.  "Ye  shall  not  act  wrongfully  touching  the 
bodily  desires  "  =  "  thou  shalt  not  commit 
adultery." 

4.  "Ye  shall  speak  no  lie"  —  no  equivalent 
in  the  Decalogue. 

68 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

5.  *'Ye  shall  drink  no  maddening  drink"  — 
no  equivalent  in  the  Decalogue. 

These  five  were  binding  on  clergy  and  laity 
alike,  but  the  remaining  five  were  imposed  on 
the  clergy  alone :  — 

6.  "Accept  no  gold  or  silver.'* 

7.  "Shun  luxurious  beds." 

8.  "Abstain  from  late  meals." 

9.  "Avoid  public  amusements." 

10.  "Abstain  from  expensive  dress." 

One  is  led  to  wonder  why  three  of  these  five 
were  not  made  equally  binding  upon  the  laity. 
But  so  far  as  our  western  civilization  is  con- 
cerned we  all  must  agree  that  they  might  well 
be  added  to  the  Decalogue  and  given  a  place 
in  that  compilation  of  universal  ethical  com- 
mandments to  which  each  of  the  world's  great 
religions  contributes  a  share.  Nor  is  this  all 
that  may  be  said  as  to  the  practical  bearing  of 
Gotman's  gospel  upon  the  moral  needs  of  the 
modern  Occident.  In  these  days  of  theological 
reconstruction,  when  men  and  women  of  afflu- 
ence and  influence  are  seen  selling  their  intel- 
lectual  birthright   for   the   pottage   of   social 

69 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

position,  popular  favor  and  business  success, 
supporting  by  their  presence  and  purse  churches 
whose  creeds  they  disown,  the  need  is  to  hear 
again  the  powerful  plea  of  Gotama  that  men 
should  be  sincere  and  free  in  their  religious 
thinking,  "betake  themselves  to  no  external 
refuge,   but  hold   fast  to  the  truth  as   to   a 
lamp."     In  these  days  of  high  living  and  low 
thinking  on  the  part  of  thousands,  immersed 
as  they  are  in  a  practical  materialism,  which 
means   gratification    of  the   senses,   creature- 
comforts  and  starvation  of  the  spirit,  what 
better  thing  can  we  do  than  point  to  Gotama's 
teaching  on  temperance,  the  "middle  path" 
which  steers  clear  of  sensualism  and  asceticism 
alike,  and  "  which  leads  to  insight,  to  wisdom, 
and  to  calm  "  ?     In  these  days  when  snobbish- 
ness, class  pride  and  exclusiveness  reveal  the 
un-American    elements    in    our    civilization, 
surely  we  do  well  to  recall  the  ringing  words  of 
India's  prophet  of  democracy:    "My  religion 
makes  no  distinction  between  high  and  low, 
rich  and  poor.     It  is  like  the  sky;  it  has  room 
for  all  and,  like  water,  it  washes  all  alike.     To 

70 


GOTAMA,    THE    BUDDHA 

him  in  whom  love  dwells  the  whole  world  is 
but  one  family." 

By  putting  his  emphasis  on  character  rather 
than  on  creed,  on  temperance  as  superior  to 
asceticism  and  the  safeguard  against  sensual- 
ism ;  by  presenting  the  "brotherhood  of  man" 
as  the  ideal  human  relationship;  by  fixing  at- 
tention on  this  life  and  its  pressing  needs  and 
refusing  to  answer  questions  concerning  the 
hereafter;  by  teaching  that  "every  man  must 
work  out  his  own  salvation  with  diligence," 
Gotama,  the  Buddha,  bequeathed  to  the  race 
precepts  and  an  example  that  will  be  an  in- 
spiration for  all  peoples  and  for  all  time. 


71 


Ill 

ZOROASTER 


Ill 

ZOROASTER 

Tj^ORTY  centuries  ago  the  ancestors  of 
Gotama,  the  Buddha,  migrated  to  India 
from  beyond  the  Himalayas,  near  the  sources 
of  the  river  Oxus.  Prior  to  this  migration 
there  was  a  period  known  as  the  "Indo- 
Iranian,"  Iran  being  the  name  of  ancient 
Persia.  A  prehistoric  period  it  is,  in  which  the 
Indians  and  the  Iranians  occupied  common 
ground,  spoke  a  common  language  and  had 
one  and  the  same  religion.  Back  of  this 
period,  again,  was  the  "Indo-European," 
when  the  language,  literature  and  religion  of 
those  who  came  to  be  known  as  Hindus, .  Par- 
sees,  Greeks,  Romans,  Teutons,  Celts,  Slavs, 
were  one.  In  other  words,  from  the  original 
Aryan  home  on  the  tablelands  of  central  Asia 
there  spread  in  seven  successive  migrations 
the  tribes  that  have  peopled  Europe  and  most 

75 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

of  Asia.  Of  these  migrations  the  two  earliest 
were  those  to  India  in  the  southwest  and  to 
Persia  in  the  southeast.  A  romantic  interest 
attaches  to  these  separated  peoples  who,  soon 
after  settling  down  on  either  side  of  the  great 
central  Asiatic  mountain-chain,  lost  all  con- 
sciousness of  their  kinship  and  of  the  fact  that 
they  once  had  a  common  home.  The  Hindu 
"Vedas"  know  nothing  of  the  Persian  "A ves- 
ta," nor  does  the  latter  show  any  knowledge  of 
what  was  going  on  across  the  Himalaya 
mountains  in  India.  Yet  we  can  translate  the 
language  of  the  one  people  into  that  of  the  other 
by  an  easy  system  of  sound  changes.  In  the 
course  of  several  centuries  the  religion  of  these 
two  peoples  became  increasingly  unlike.  Hin- 
duism is  monistic,  pessimistic,  speculative; 
bent  on  finding  a  way  of  escape  from  the  weary 
round  of  existences  and  believing  it  is  found 
in  realizing  that  Brahma,  the  soul  of  the  uni- 
verse, is  the  only  true  and  permanent  reality, 
and  that  all  human  finite  souls  are  but  passing 
realities,  to  be  absorbed  at  last  into  Brahma 
through  this  very  realization  of  their  own  im- 

76 


ZOROASTER 

permanence  and  the  perpetuity  of  Brahma 
alone.  The  Persian  religion  is  dualistic,  op- 
timistic, unphilosophic,  yet  deeply  ethical  and 
spiritual,  and  has  produced  very  superior 
types  of  human  life. 

Thus  the  primitive  Aryan  religion  diverging 
in  two  directions,  resulted  in  the  religion  of 
ancient  India  and  that  of  ancient  Persia. 
And  just  as  the  warm,  benignant  climate  and 
the  rich  fruitful  soil  of  western  India  fostered 
a  brooding,  speculative  tendency,  giving  the 
religion  of  the  country  that  characteristic 
against  which  Gotama  protested,  so  the  less 
favorable  environment  of  Iran  necessitated 
industry,  precluded  speculation  and  gave  to 
the  religion  of  the  country  the  unique  emphasis 
which  it  puts  on  work  and  the  relation  of  work 
to  "salvation." 

Persia's  place  among  the  nations  of  antiquity 
was  second  only  to  that  of  Greece  and  Rome. 
As  an  index  of  her  greatness  recall  the  fact  that 
in  the  fifth  century  before  our  era  she  had  come 
into  possession  of  Assyria  and  Babylonia  and 
held  the  Hebrews  under  her  sway  both  at  home 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

and  abroad.  Egypt,  Scj^thia,  India,  Greece, 
all  were  politically  controlled  by  "edicts'* 
from  the  Persian  capital.  So  great  was  Per- 
sia's power  at  this  time  that  the  late  Max 
Mliller  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  if  the  battles 
of  Marathon  and  Salamis  had  been  lost  to 
Greece,  Zoroastrianism,  which  was  the  state 
religion  of  the  Persian  empire,  would  have  be- 
come the  religion  of  the  civilized  world.  In 
other  words,  if  by  the  grace  of  the  Persian 
god,  Ahura-Mazda,  Darius  had  been  vic- 
torious over  Alexander  the  Great,  belief  in 
the  Olympian  deities  and  myths  would  never 
have  replaced  the  teachings  of  Zoroaster.  But 
Persia  did  not  go  down  to  permanent  defeat. 
A  thousand  years  later  she  was  once  more  in 
the  ascendant,  till  the  year  641,  when  the  Mo- 
hammedan invasion  established  Islam  where 
Zoroastrianism  had  reigned.  The  great  ma- 
jority of  the  faithful  refused  to  accept  the  new 
religion  and  were  forthwith  punished  with  exile. 
They  found  a  refuge  in  the  northwestern  part 
of  India,  now  known  as  the  presidency  of 
Bombay.     There,    to-day,    one   may   see   the 

78 


ZOROASTER 

descendants  of  those  exiles,  numbering  nearly 
100,000  souls ;  a  people  world-renowned  for 
their  intellectual  and  moral  worth  and  for  the 
perfervid  enthusiasm  with  which  they  per- 
petuate the  religion  of  their  fathers ;  a  religion 
that  has  contributed  several  important  doc- 
trines to  Christianity,  through  Judaism;  a 
religion  that  has  left  its  solemn  record,  not 
only  in  the  pages  of  the  "  Avesta"  and  on  the 
giant  ruins  at  Persepolis,  but  also  in  the  high- 
toned  lives  of  the  Zoroastrian  colony  at  Bom- 
bay. On  the  influence  of  this  religion  upon 
New  Testament  theology  we  shall  not  have 
time  to  dwell.  Suffice  it  only  to  say  that  the 
angelology,  demonology,  eschatology  and  doc- 
trine of  rewards  and  punishments,  found  in  the 
Christian  Bible  are  closely  related  to  the  teach- 
ing of  the  Avesta  and  in  some  measure  trace- 
able to  that  source. 

Carlyle  once  said,  "Great  men  have  short 
biographies."  In  the  case  of  Zoroaster  we  have 
the  shortest  of  all.  Less  is  known  of  him  than 
of  any  other  of  the  great  moral  leaders  of  the 
Orient.     The  "Spend-Nask,"  of   the  Avesta, 

79 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

which  contained  the  story  of  his  life  has  been 
almost  entirely  lost.  Meagre  as  is  the  au- 
thentic information  we  have  concerning  Jesus, 
what  we  positively  know  about  Zoroaster  is 
still  less.  Legends  there  are,  corresponding 
to  those  of  the  New  Testament  Apocrypha, 
and  precisely  as  these  produced  doubt  of  the 
historicity  of  Jesus,  so  the  earlier  legends  gave 
rise  to  the  suspicion  that  no  such  person  as 
Zoroaster  ever  lived.  But  this  extreme  posi- 
tion is  not  generally  accepted  among  scholars, 
for  Zoroaster  is  too  deeply  rooted  in  tradition 
to  be  wholly  discredited.  Moreover  these  very 
legends  testify,  as  does  nothing  else,  to  the 
essential  greatness  of  his  personality.  He  is 
represented  as  holding  intercourse  with  the 
deity.  At  his  appearance  all  Nature  rejoices. 
He  enters  into  conflict  with  demons  and  drives 
them  off  the  face  of  the  earth.  Angro-Mainyus 
(Satan)  approaches,  tempting  him  to  renounce 
his  religion.  The  Gods  initiate  him  into  his 
prophetic  oflSce  and  act  as  guardians  through- 
out his  public  career.^    Say  what  we  will  of  these 

1  Yasht,  13,  17.     Vendidad,  19. 
80 


ZOROASTER. 


ZOROASTER 

legends  the  fact  remains  that  no  such  wonder 
stories  are  ever  told  of  men  of  ordinary  mould. 
The  name  Zoroaster  is  a  corruption  of 
"Zarathushtra,"  and  signifies  "possessor  of 
camels."  His  father's  name  was  Pouru- 
shaspa,  a  member  of  the  Cpitama  family. 
Neither  the  place,  year,  month  nor  day  of  his 
birth  is  known.  A  double  tradition  regarding 
his  birthplace  warrants  us  in  believing  that 
Bactria,  the  modern  Afghanistan,  was  the  prov- 
ince in  which  he  was  born,  though  the  testimony 
is  conflicting  as  to  the  town.  The  date  of  his 
birth  has  been  set  as  far  back  as  6000  B.C.  and 
as  far  forward  as  300  B.C.  and  though  scholar- 
ship is  still  divided  on  the  subject,  there  is 
an  increasing  tendency  to  regard  600  b.c.  as 
approximately  correct.  From  the  "Gathas" 
(the  earliest  portion  of  the  Avesta)  we  learn 
that  Zoroaster  was  a  husband  and  a  father,  a 
warrior  and  a  farmer.  Here  also  is  recorded 
the  legend  of  his  "call"  to  become  a  moral 
leader,  reformer  and  founder  of  a  new  re- 
ligion. One  day,  so  the  story  reads,  the  cry 
of  the  oppressed  peasants  of  Bactria  went  up 

G  81 


GREAT   RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

to  Heaven.     The  celestial  host  hearing  the  cry 
promptly  held  a  conference  at  the  throne  of 
the  supreme  god  Ahura  Mazda.     Whereupon 
it  was  voted  to  call  Zoroaster  to  deliver  the 
oppressed  people.     But,  on  receiving  the  di- 
vine summons,  he  hesitates,  as  did  Gotama 
and  Jesus,  on  the  eve  of  their  assuming  the 
prophetic  role.     Finally  Zoroaster  accepts  the 
call  and  goes  forth  to  preach  the  will  of  Ahura 
Mazda,    as    against    that    of    the    false    gods 
(devas)  of  the  oppressors  who  promptly  be- 
came  "devils"    (dacvas)   in   the  eyes   of  the 
Zoroastrians.     From  the  Gathas,  too,  we  learn 
of  the  poor  success  that  attended  Zoroaster's 
first  public  preaching  and  of  his  visit  to  King 
Vishtaspa,  who  gave  him  his  patronage  and 
protection,   who   "broke   with   his   weapon   a 
path  for  the  truth"  and  became  the  arm  and 
support  of   the   Zoroastrian   faith,   raising   it 
to  power  and  spreading  it  abroad.^ 

As  the  representative  of  Ahura  Mazda, 
Zoroaster  is  the  first  annunciator  of  that  moral 
triad  which  constitutes  the  corner-stone  of  the 

1  Yasht,  13. 

I 

82 


ZOROASTER 

faith:  "humata,  hukhta,  hvarshta"  —  good 
thoughts,  good  words,  good  deeds.  In  that 
same  capacity  Zoroaster  is  the  first  priest  of 
the  sacred  fire.  Just  here  let  me  interject  a 
word  of  caution  against  the  popular  habit  of 
regarding  the  Parsees  as  "fire- worshippers." 
That  is  as  serious  a  mistake  as  to  call  the  Bud- 
dhists "idol-worshippers,"  the  Hindus  "sun- 
worshippers,"  or  the  Christians  "cross-wor- 
shippers." When  the  Hindu  said,  "O  Savitri, 
thou  Sun,"  he  was  not  thinking  of  the  fiery 
ball  that  rises  over  the  Himalayas  and  sets 
behind  the  Indus,  but  rather  of  the  power 
within  or  behind  the  sun,  responsible  for  every 
function  it  fulfils.  When  the  Christian  kneels 
before  his  crucifix,  it  is  simply  as  an  aid  to 
spiritual  concentration,  the  real  object  of  his 
worship  being  the  Christ,  or  God,  or  the  Virgin 
Mary,  as  the  case  may  be.  Similarly,  to  the 
Parsees  fire  serves  a  symbolical  function. 
Well  do  I  remember  the  language  of  the  la- 
mented Jeneghier  D.  Cola,  the  distinguished 
representative  of  Zoroastrianism  at  the  World's 
Parliament  of  Religions,  when  discussing  with 

83 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

him  the  meaning  of  fire  as  a  religious  symbol. 
"While  our  eyes  are  fixed  on  the  sacred  flame 
our  hearts  are  humbled  before  Ahura  Mazda, 
our  God."  To  the  Parsees  fire  is  the  most  per- 
fect symbol  of  deity.  Its  purity,  its  power,  its 
refulgence,  its  incorruptibility,  its  glory, —  each 
of  these  suggests  an  attribute  of  their  deity 
and  so  they  keep  the  sacred  flame  constantly 
burning,  as  a  helpful  symbol,  an  aid  in  concen- 
trating their  thought  upon  their  God.  This 
choice  of  fire  as  the  supreme  symbol  of  deity 
illustrates  the  influence  of  environment  upon 
religious  ideas.  Iran  was  a  veritable  fire- 
country,  bespread  with  naphtha  springs,  sur- 
rounded by  burning  mountains,  overhung  with 
meteoric  lights  and  stars  that  shone  through 
the  clear  atmosphere  so  brilliantly  as  to  seem 
articulate  with  spiritual  meaning  and  sug- 
gestion. In  the  twenty -fourth  "Yasht"  of  the 
Avesta  we  read  of  "the  holy  Zarathushtra," 
who  first  thought  what  was  good,  spoke  what 
was  good,  did  what  was  good;  who  was  the 
first  Priest,  the  first  Warrior,  the  first  Plougher 
of  the  ground ;  who  first  knew  and  first  taught 

84 


ZOROASTER 

the  word  of  Holiness  and  obedience  to  the 
Word ;  who  had  a  revelation  of  the  Lord ;  in 
whose  birth  and  growth  the  waters  and  plants 
rejoiced  and  all  the  creatures  of  the  good  crea- 
tion cried  out,  Hail  !  ^ 

Just  how  the  gospel  of  Zoroaster  came  to  be 
differentiated  from  that  of  his  Aryan  brethren 
is  still  an  open,  unsolved  question.  Some 
years  ago  there  was  much  promising  speculation 
concerning  it,  and  it  is  certain  to  be  revived 
with  the  discovery  of  new  material,  as  has  oc- 
curred again  and  again  since  Duperron  made 
his  famous  find  in  1754.  That  the  once  twin 
peoples  (Indian  and  Iranian)  later  quarrelled 
theologically,  on  matters  of  creed  and  ritual,  no 
one  doubts.  In  all  probability  the  split  harks 
back  to  the  jealousy  of  the  less  favored  com- 
munity, reviling  the  local  deity  which  showed 
favoritism  to  their  more  prosperous  neighbor. 
But  be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  clear  from  certain 
passages  in  the  Avesta  that  Zoroaster  did  not 
agree  with  those  of  his  compatriots  who  re- 
garded penances,  prayers,  sacrifices  and  fast- 

1  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  Vol.  XXIII,  pp.  201-202. 

85 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

ings  as  of  paramount  importance  in  religion, 
and  who  thought  it  right  to  pass  half  the  day 
in  begging  food  in  order  that  the  remainder 
might  be  spent  under  a  shady  tree  in  undis- 
turbed meditation  and  prayer.  From  all  this 
he  recoiled,  holding  that  prayer  should  alwaj^s 
be  a  means,  never  an  end;  that  work  is  the 
completing  of  prayer,  the  hands  fulfilling  the 
prayer  of  the  heart ;  that  industry  is  more  than 
meditation  and  settled,  agricultural  life  better 
than  wandering,  nomadic  life.  Such  were  the 
aflSrmations  which  supplemented  the  negations 
of  Zoroaster's  protest  and  insured  the  life  of 
his  reform.  All  who  agreed  with  him  settled 
down  on  the  plains  of  Iran.  For  their  encour- 
agement and  inspiration  Zoroaster  made  known 
to  them  a  great  saying  which  he  declared  had 
been  revealed  to  him  by  Ahura  Mazda  :  "Four 
places  on  earth  are  most  dear  to  me.  First, 
where  the  sacred  fire  burns.  Second,  where 
homes  are  established,  with  wife  and  children, 
with  fire  and  plenty.  Third,  where  the  most 
corn  and  fruit  are  raised.     Fourth,  where  dry 

lands  are  irrigated  and  marshy  lands  drained." 

86 


ZOROASTER 

What  a  mighty  inspiration  it  must  have  been  to 
those  people,  who  had  settled  on  a  soil  that  re- 
quired persistent  and  arduous  labor  to  make  it 
productive  and  life-sustaining,  to  hear  that 
the  very  place  of  their  abode  was  most  pleas- 
ing to  their  God  ! 

Small  wonder  that  this  great  moral  leader 
should  advocate  industry  and  teach  the  dignity, 
nay,  the  sacred  efficacy  of  work.  Turn  to  the 
"Vendidad,"  the  "Leviticus"  of  the  Avesta, 
and  note  there  the  emphasis  laid  on  character 
and  on  work  as  a  sacred  duty. 

"Contend  constantly  against  evil,  strive 
in  every  way  to  diminish  the  power  of  evil; 
strive  to  keep  pure  in  body  and  mind  and  so 
prevent  the  entrance  of  evil  spirits  who  are 
always  trying  to  gain  possession  of  men.  Cul- 
tivate the  soil,  drain  marshes,  destroy  danger- 
ous creatures.  He  who  sows  the  ground  with 
diligence  acquires  more  religious  merit  than  he 
could  gain  by  a  thousand  prayers  in  idleness. 
Diligence  in  thy  occupation  is  the  greatest 
good  work.  To  sew  patch  on  patch  is  better 
than  begging  rich  men  for  clothing.     The  man 

87 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

who  has  constantly  contended  against  evil 
may  fearlessly  meet  death.  Death  being  a 
fact,  have  no  fear  of  it,  fear  only  not  having 
lived  well  enough.  Indulge  not  in  slothful 
sleep  lest  the  work  which  needs  to  be  done 
remains  undone.  The  cock  lifts  up  his  voice 
with  every  splendid  dawn  and  cries:  Arise,  ye 
men,  and  destroy  the  demon  that  would  put 
back  the  world  in  sleep.  Long  sleeping  be- 
comes you  not,  arise,  'tis  day;  who  rises  first 
comes  first  to  paradise !  In  whom  does  Ahura 
Mazda  rejoice  ?  In  him  who  adorns  the  earth 
with  grain  and  grass,  who  dries  up  moist 
places  and  waters  dry  places.  He  who  tills 
the  ground  is  as  good  a  servant  of  religion  as 
he  who  offers  ten  thousand  prayers  in  idle- 
ness. He  is  a  holy  man  who  has  built  him  a 
home  in  which  are  wife  and  children  and  the 
sacred  fire.  Whoso  cultivates  barley  culti- 
vates virtue.  When  the  wheat  appears  the 
demons  hiss,  when  the  grain  is  ripe  they  flee  in 
rage.  He  who  does  not  eat  has  not  strength 
to  live  rightly  nor  to  work."  ^ 

1  Vendidad,  XVIII,  iii. 
88 


ZOROASTER     . 

These  quotations  show  the  emphasis  placed 
by  Zoroaster  on  work  and  also  the  reason  for  it. 
Work,  according  to  his  theory  of  the  universe, 
is  the  most  effective  agent  for  destroying  the 
power  of  Angro  Mainyus,  the  ultimate  source  of 
all  evil  in  the  world.  Behind  his  ethics  Zoroas- 
ter had  a  clear-cut  theology  the  substance  of 
which  is  that  the  universe  is  under  the  control  of 
two  opposing  principles  or  powers,  the  one  good, 
the  other  evil ;  the  one,  Ahura  Mazda,  or 
Ormuzd ;  the  other,  Angro  Mainyus,  or  Ahri- 
man.  Ahura  Mazda  created  the  beautiful 
world  of  Nature  and  of  Man.  Then  Angro 
Mainyus  crept  into  the  good  creation  and 
marred  it  by  matching  every  beautiful  thing 
with  a  counter-creation  of  something  evil. 
The  *' Vendidad"  opens  with  an  account  of  this 
alternating  process:  "I,  O  Zarathushtra  Spi- 
tama,  made  the  first  best  place,  which  is 
Airyana  Va^jah;  thereupon  Angra  Mainyu 
(the  Evil  Spirit)  created  a  counter  creation,  a 
serpent  in  the  river,  and  frost  made  by  the 
demons.  .  .  .  The  third  place  which  I,  Ahura 
Mazda,  made  the  best  was  Mouru  ;  thereupon 

89 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

Angra  Mainyu  (the  Evil  Spirit)  created  a 
counter  creation,  which  was  backbiting  and 
lust.  .  .  .  The  fifth  place  which  I,  Ahura 
Mazda,  made  the  best  was  Nisaya ;  thereupon, 
in  opposition  to  it,  Angra  Mainyu  (the  Evil 
Spirit),  full  of  death,  created  a  counter  crea- 
tion, which  was  the  curse  of  unbelief.  .  .  . 
As  the  seventh  place  I,  who  am  Ahura  Mazda, 
created  Vaekereta,  .  .  .  thereupon,  in  opposi- 
tion to  it,  Angra  Mainyu  (the  Evil  Spirit), 
full  of  death,  created  the  evil  fairy  who  clave 
to  Keresaspa.  ...  As  the  ninth  place,  1, 
who  am  Ahura  Mazda,  created  Khnenta  as 
the  best  .  .  .  thereupon  Aiigra  Mainyu  (the 
Evil  Spirit)  created  a  counter  creation,  the 
inexpiable  deed  of  Sodomy." 

Note  that  Angro-Mainyus  is  not  introduced 
as  a  creation  of  Ahura-Mazda.  Just  who  cre- 
ated him,  or  whence  he  came,  we  are  not  told. 
This  holds  equally  true  of  the  Hebrew  "Sa- 
tan." 

There  is,  then,  this  conflict  between  the  two 
opposing  powers.  A  great  cleft  runs  through 
the  entire  world,  dividing  it  into  two  realms, 

90 


ZOROASTER 

the  two  controlling  powers  counter-balancing 
each  other.  Yet  this  dualism  is  neither  abso- 
lute nor  eternal.  Rather  is  it  "an  episode 
in  the  existence  of  Ormuzd,"  for  he  is  the  su- 
preme and  only  god ;  omnipresent,  omniscient, 
but  not  yet  omnipotent,  because  coeval  with 
him,  though  not  coeternal,  is  Ahriman.  In 
other  words,  Zoroaster's  dualism  is  temporary. 
He  was  fundamentally  a  monotheist,  believing 
(as  did  Jesus)  that  a  deliverer  from  all  evil, 
a  "Saoshyant,"  or  Messiah,  would  finally 
come  and  God's  (Ahura-Mazda's)  kindgom  be 
all  in  all.  At  his  advent  the  great  *' world- 
fire"  will  be  started.  In  molten  metal  will  all 
good  souls  be  painlessly  perfected  and  all 
wicked  ones  be  utterly  consumed,  but  to  the 
pure,  "it  will  seem  as  though  they  were  bath- 
ing in  warm  milk."  Then  will  the  eternal 
Kingdom  of  the  Good  be  ushered  in  and  eternal 
bliss  bless  a  renovated  world.  In  the  "  Gathas  " 
we  read  :  "Now  will  I  proclaim  to  you  who  are 
drawing  near  and  wish  to  be  taught  those 
things  that  pertain  to  Him  who  knows  all 
things.     And  I  pray  that  propitious  results 

91 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

may  be  seen.  Hear  ye  then  with  your  ears, 
awake  ye  to  our  teaching  !  '* 

"The  primeval  spirits  who  as  a  pair  have 
been  famed  of  old  are  a  better  and  a  worse  as 
to  thought,  word  and  deed.  Between  these  two 
let  the  wisely-acting  choose  aright.  Choose 
ye  not  as  the  evildoers  !  .  .  .  And  when  the 
great  struggle  shall  have  been  fought  out  then, 
O  Mazda,  the  Kingdom  shall  have  been  gained 
for  Thee  !  And  may  we  be  such  as  those 
who  bring  on  this  great  renovation  and  make 
the  world  progressive  till  its  perfection  shall 
have  been  reached.  And  when  perfection 
shall  have  been  attained,  then  will  the  blow  of 
destruction  fall  upon  the  Demon  of  Falsehood, 
but  swiftest  in  the  happy  abode  of  Ahura,  the 
righteous  saints  shall  gather.  Wherefor,  O 
ye  men,  learn  the  blessings  that  are  in  store 
for  the  righteous."  ^ 

According  to  Zoroaster,  then,  the  world  is  a 
battle-field  on  which  every  human  being  is  a 
soldier,  fighting  on  the  side  of  Ahura-Mazda 
and  his  archangels  and  angels,  or  on  the  side 

1  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  Vol.  XXXI,  pp.  28-35. 

92 


ZOROASTER 

of  Angro-Mainyus  and  his  archdemons  and 
demons.  The  weapons  used  by  the  good  sol- 
diers are  not  swords  but  ploughshares;  not  guns, 
but  good  thoughts,  good  words,  good  deeds. 

Over  against  the  heavenly  host  stands  the 
infernal  host,  each  led  by  a  commander- 
general,  the  object  of  the  war  being  to  gain 
possession  of  the  soul  of  man.  True,  man  was 
created  by  the  good  spirit,  Ahura-Mazda, 
but  it  was  as  a  free  moral  agent  that  He  created 
him.  Thus  man,  being  susceptible  to  evil, 
may  range  himself  on  the  evil  side  of  the  war, 
or  on  the  good,  identify  himself  with  Ahriman 
or  with  Ormuzd  and  according  as  he  chooses 
so  will  the  issue  be,  for  without  man's  coopera- 
tion victory  remains  a  dream. 

If  we  could  have  asked  Zoroaster  the  first 
question  in  the  Presbyterian  catechism,  "What 
is  the  chief  end  of  man  ? "  his  answer  would 
have  been, not  that  of  the  Christian,  "to  glorify 
God  and  enjoy  Him  forever,"  nor  that  of  the 
Buddhist,  —  to  walk  the  eightfold  path  of 
escape  from  rebirth.  Rather  would  Zoroas- 
ter's answer  have  been  :  to  help  Ahura-Mazda 

93 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

conquer  the  evil  in  the  world,  by  work  that 
shall  keep  pure  the  earth  and  the  air,  the  body 
and  the  soul.  The  earth,  he  said,  is  a  pure 
creation  of  God ;  keep  it  pure  by  tilling  it  and 
allowing  no  noxious  weeds  to  grow.  Water  is 
a  pure  creation  of  God ;  do  not  pollute  it  by 
washing  your  hands  or  your  linen  in  a  running 
stream.  If  you  see  a  corpse  floating  in  a 
stream,  remove  it  for  it  will  pollute  the  water. 
Air  is  a  pure  creation  of  God ;  keep  it  pure  by 
ventilation,  by  dissipating  noxious  gases  and 
destroying  noxious  insects.  Fire  is  a  pure 
creation  of  God ;  keep  it  pure.  Do  not  burn 
a  dead  body,  lest  you  pollute  the  fire,  do  not 
bury  it,  lest  you  pollute  the  earth.  How  then, 
you  ask,  do  the  Parsees  dispose  of  their  dead  ? 
On  the  "Towers  of  Silence,"  —  circular  stone 
structures,  open  to  the  sky.  There  on  the 
parapet  of  the  tower  vultures,  dedicated  for 
the  purpose,  congregate  and  devour  the  flesh 
of  the  dead,  their  bones  falling  through  the 
steel  gratings  on  which  the  bodies  are  laid, 
into  a  pit  of  quicklime  below. 

Believing  in  the  sacred  eflScacy  of  work  as 

94 


ZOROASTER 

the  most  powerful  means  for  annihilating  the 
sway  of  Angro-Mainyus,  Zoroaster  prohibited 
fasting,  self-torture,  excessive  grief,  everything 
calculated  to  enervate  the  body  or  to  reduce 
the  power  of  the  will.  In  direct  contrast  to 
the  Hinduism  which  made  asceticism  a  virtue, 
this  great  moral  leader  looked  upon  it  as  a 
sin,  and  rightly  so.  For  asceticism  means  a 
waste  of  positive  power,  and  one's  life  is  never 
made  noble  and  fine  by  wasting  its  opportuni- 
ties, or  by  thwarting  one's  natural  powers,  or 
by  crushing  out  normal  desires.  To  be  sure, 
in  an  age  like  ours,  when  a  thousand  things 
are  inviting  us  to  become  immersed  in  the  life 
of  the  senses,  a  measure  of  ascetic  self-disci- 
pline is  an  excellent  device  for  maintaining 
the  balance  of  life.  But,  as  a  philosophy  of 
life,  asceticism  falls  short  of  the  ideal,  which  is 
nothing  less  than  the  harmonious  development 
of  all  the  rich  possibilities  of  our  many-sided 
human  nature  in  a  rounded  life. 

One  sin  there  was,  according  to  Zoroaster, 
worse  than  fasting,  nay,  the  deadliest  sin  of 
all  —  suicide.     The  reason  for  his  utter  con- 

95 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

demnation  of  this  sin  was  that  no  one  should 
ever  allow  the  sacred  flame  of  enthusiasm  for  the 
victory  of  the  good  to  die  out  in  his  heart,  nor 
should  one  ever  be  willing  to  reduce  by  even 
a  single  soldier  the  valiant  army  of  warriors 
fighting  under  Ahura-Mazda  for  the  destruc- 
tion of  evil  and  its  source.  Stripped  of  its 
theological  elements,  where,  I  ask,  shall  we 
look  for  a  worthier  reason  for  self-preservation 
than  this  ?  What  a  contrast  between  Zoro- 
aster's argument  against  suicide  and  Shak- 
spere's  based  on  the  belief,  as  expressed  by 
Hamlet,  that  in  taking  our  life  we  may  be 
fleeing  from  present  ills  to  others  worse  than 
those  we  know.  What  a  contrast  again  to 
the  Buddhistic  view,  that  suicide  is  to  be 
spurned  because  it  is  useless,  rebirth  being 
inevitable.  Only  the  Zoroastrian  motive  is 
worthy  to  serve  in  the  class  of  true  and  ade- 
quate deterrents.  When  General  Booth  ad- 
dressed the  *' Anti-Suicide  League"  of  London, 
he  drew,  quite  unconsciously,  upon  Zoroaster's 
double  reason  for  denouncing  suicide,  holding 
this  to   be  the   sole   valid   motive   to   which 

96 


ZOROASTER 

successful  appeal  can  be  made.  We  must  stay 
here  on  earth  to  be  of  service,  and  countless  are 
the  ways  in  which  we  can  serve. 

Three  commandments  were  given  a  supreme 
place  in  the  moral  code  of  Zoroaster:  To  speak 
the  truth,  to  keep  one's  promises,  and  to  keep 
out  of  debt.  Ahriman  is  the  father  of  lies  and 
flourishes  on  the  falsehoods  of  Ormuzd's  chil- 
dren. Their  unreliability  and  insolvency,  wher- 
ever evidenced,  increase  the  strength  of  Ahri- 
man and  tend  to  lengthen  his  days.  Hence 
the  emphasis  on  veracity,  reliability  and  finan- 
cial solvency  as  virtues  fraught  with  power  to 
promote  the  victory  of  Ormuzd  over  Ahriman. 

As  an  additional  agency  for  the  sure  and 
speedy  triumph  of  the  good  principle,  Zoro- 
aster instituted  an  elaborate  ceremonial,  sup- 
plementing his  gospel  of  work  with  ritualistic 
observances  calculated  to  fortify  the  soul  in  its 
devotion  to  purity.  In  the  "Vendidad"  and 
in  the  *'Vispered"  of  the  A  vesta,  the  forms 
and  regulations  of  this  ceremonial  are  recorded. 
As  we  read  them  we  realize  why  it  was  that 
with  all  its  ennobling  and  inspiring  ethical 
H  97 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

teaching  Zoroaster's  religion  was  disqualified 
for  becoming  a  universal  religion.  It  was 
because  of  this  intensely  local,  elaborate, 
detailed  scheme  of  ritual,  together  with  the 
demands  it  exacted  of  the  worshipper  and  the 
complicated  character  of  the  theology  involved. 
As  a  great  moral  leader  Zoroaster  brought  to 
his  people  an  ethics  of  personal  life.  To  his 
hearers  he  said,  in  substance :  Each  one  of  you 
is  a  child  of  Ahura-Mazda.  By  birthright 
you  belong  to  the  Kingdom  of  the  Good.  You 
were  created  a  free  moral  agent  and  are  there- 
fore at  liberty  to  choose  between  good  and 
evil.  But  on  your  choice  will  depend  your 
salvation  and  the  joy  of  sharing  with  Ahura- 
Mazda  the  ultimate  victory  of  the  good. 
Moreover,  the  strictest  account  is  kept  of 
your  thoughts,  words  and  deeds.  On  the  judg- 
ment day  these  will  be  weighed  in  the  balance 
and  your  eternal  destiny  determined.  Hence, 
it  behooves  you  to  choose  the  good  life.  To 
help  you  in  making  the  choice  Zoroaster  was 
sent,  teaching  that  God's  will  is  that  the  good 
triumph  over  evil  and  that  each  human  soul 

98 


ZOROASTER 

act  as  a  cooperator  with  Him  in  the  gigantic, 
age-long  task  of  world  redemption.  Nor  is 
there  any  higher  source  of  inspiration  for  the 
conduct  of  life  than  just  this  conviction  that 
you  are  cooperating  with  God  unto  this  end, 
and  that  by  so  doing  you  are  destined  to  share 
the  joy  in  store  for  all  who  fight  on  the  side 
of  the  sovereign  lord,  Ahura-Mazda. 

What  a  contrast  between  this  gospel  of  "up 
and  doing"  and  the  doctrine  of  meditation  and 
fasting  inculcated  by  the  Brahmins  when  the 
Buddha  came  to  inaugurate  his  reform.  What 
a  contrast,  too,  between  the  optimistic  aim  of 
Zoroaster  and  the  pessimistic  aim  of  Gotama. 
For,  whereas  the  latter  sought  to  overcome 
existence  in  order  that  suffering,  sorrow  and 
re-birth  may  be  ended,  Zoroaster  sought  to 
overcome  evil  in  order  that  existence  might 
be  glorified  and  transfigured. 

Concerning  the  hereafter  Zoroaster's  ideas 
were  exceedingly  definite  and  concrete.  Ac- 
cording to  his  theory,  the  soul,  on  the  third 
night  after  the  body's  decease,  arrives  at 
"Chinvat,"  the  Bridge  of  Reckoning,  across 

99 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

which  Hes  the  road  to  Paradise.  Two  angels 
make  up  the  account,  weighing  the  soul's 
good  and  evil  deeds  in  "just  balances"  that 
vary  not  a  hair's  breadth  for  either  kings 
or  subjects.  If  the  good  deeds  outweigh  the 
evil,  the  bridge  is  easy  of  passage,  and  the 
man's  conscience,  in  the  form  of  a  beautiful 
maiden,  comes  to  meet  him  and  conduct  him 
to  Paradise.  But  in  the  case  of  the  wicked  the 
bridge  narrows  to  the  width  of  a  razor-blade 
and  he  falls  off,  plunging  headlong  into  hell.^ 
Should  the  good  and  the  evil  be  equally  bal- 
anced, the  soul  passes  into  an  intermediate 
state  of  existence  and  its  final  destiny  is  not 
determined  till  the  last  judgment,  when  the 
"Saoshyant"  will  usher  in  the  everlasting 
Kingdom  of  the  Good. 

The  beneficent  influence  of  Zoroaster's  ethics 
is  attested  in  the  writings  of  Herodotus,  who 
refers  in  glowing  terms  to  the  nobility  and 
purity  of  Parsee  life  in  the  time  of  Darius.  It 
is  evidenced,  again,  in  the  lives  of  the  ten 

1  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  Vol.  XXIII,  pp.  134  ff. ;  Vol.  XXIV, 
pp.  258  ff. 

100 


ZOROASTER 

thousand  Zoroastrians  in  Afghanistan  and  also 
in  the  community  at  Bombay.  Travellers 
tell  us  that  these  people  exemplify  to  an  excep- 
tional degree  the  teachings  of  their  Master. 
Truthfulness,  temperance,  industriousness, 
commercial  integrity  and  chastity  are  charac- 
teristics of  their  life.  In  the  cities  where  they 
live,  it  is  said,  one  does  not  meet  with  drunken 
men  nor  with  women  of  the  town,  —  the  de- 
graded creatures  that  are  seen  on  the  streets  of 
every  Christian  city.  As  for  the  generosity 
of  the  Parsees,  it  is  unrivalled,  extending  far 
beyond  the  limits  of  Bombay.  It  went  to 
Russia  at  the  time  of  the  Crimean  War,  when 
Florence  Nightingale  described  the  Zoroas- 
trian  colony  as  "the  salt  of  the  Bombay  com- 
munity." It  went  to  France  in  1859,  when 
the  terrible  inundations  necessitated  the  sup- 
plementing of  local  aid  by  foreign  help,  and  the 
Parsees  were  among  the  first  to  respond  and 
among  the  most  liberal  of  the  contributors. 
It  went  to  the  United  States  at  the  time  of  the 
Civil  War,  our  Sanitary  Commission  receiving 
a  handsome  remembrance  from  the  followers 

101 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

of  Zoroaster  in  India,  sent,  they  said,  because 
of  their  sympathy  with  the  suffering  soldiers 
and  with  the  Cause  of  Freedom  and  union.  A 
few  decades  ago  an  American  Christian,  Mr. 
George  Peabody,  held  the  record  for  generous 
giving  to  charity,  but  it  was  soon  broken  by  a 
Bombay  Parsee,  who  more  than  doubled  the 
then  record-gift.  Such  are  some  of  the  prac- 
tical results  of  the  gospel  of  him  whose  birth- 
place and  birthday  we  do  not  know,  the  details 
of  whose  career  we  do  not  know,  but  from 
whom  an  influence  went  forth  that  has  been 
felt  for  twenty-four  centuries  or  more,  a  great 
moral  leader  from  whose  mind  and  heart  there 
flowed  a  stream  of  inspiration  that  has  made 
glad  the  waste  places  of  unnumbered  lives  and 
made  the  desert  of  drudgery  and  difficulty  to 
blossom  as  the  rose.  It  may  be  that  in  your 
home  and  in  mine  there  is  no  altar  dedicated 
to  the  keeping  of  the  sacred  fire,  but  surely  on 
the  spiritual  altar  of  our  hearts  we  may  keep 
the  sacred  fire  of  purity  aflame  so  that  our  lives, 
too,  may  be  aglow  with  good  thoughts,  good 
words,  good  deeds. 

102 


IV 
CONFUCIUS  AND  LAO-TZE 


IV 

CONFUCIUS  AND  LAO-TZE 

/^  OTAMA  and  Zoroaster  belong  to  the 
^^^  Aryan  branch  of  the  human  family, 
Confucius  and  Lao-Tze  to  the  Turanian. 
Chief  among  the  divisions  of  this  branch  is 
the  Mongolian  race  of  China;  a  people  in 
whom  the  understanding  has  been  more  highly 
developed  than  the  imagination,  whose  inter- 
ests are  practical  and  ethical,  rather  than 
speculative  and  metaphysical ;  whose  con- 
cern is  for  order,  decorum,  proprietj^  mod- 
eration, rather  than  for  meditation,  prayer  and 
spiritual  songs  ;  a  backward  looking  race, 
whose  reverence  for  the  past  accounts  fun- 
damentally for  many  characteristics  of  their 
present  life. 

China  is  a  country  that  supports  nearly 
one-third  of  the  human  race  and  on  an  area 
equal  to  half  that  of  the  United  States;    a 

105 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

country  with  twenty-five  hundred  miles  of 
coast-Hne  and  three  immense  river  valleys, 
aggregating  six  thousand  miles;  a  country 
that  has  witnessed  the  rise  and  fall  of  succes- 
sive civilizations,  the  oldest  of  which  antedates 
the  pyramids  and  the  sphinx ;  a  country  whose 
industry  is  world-renowned  and  symbolized 
by  the  gigantic  wall,  —  twelve  hundred  miles 
long,  twenty -five  feet  high,  surmounted  by  a 
parapet  on  which  six  horsemen  can  ride  abreast, 
built  twenty  centuries  ago,  yet  its  masonry 
still  commanding  the  admiration  of  the  world. 
Of  the  nature  and  variety  of  China's  industry, 
let  the  achievements  of  Pekin  and  Nankin, 
Canton  and  Hong  Kong  tell.  Nay,  we  have 
but  to  recall  the  fact  that  many  of  our  English 
words  for  textile  goods,  such  as  silk,  satin,  nan- 
keen, are  of  Chinese  origin,  to  appreciate  the 
significance  of  that  industry.  China's  watch- 
word has  ever  been  "education"  and  though 
her  educational  system  be  open  to  criticism, 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  it  has  made  for 
efficient  government,  tending  to  the  total  elimi- 
nation of  nepotism  and  the  spoils  system  by 

106 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

means  of  the  civil  service  examinations  re- 
quired of  applicants  for  the  great  majority  of 
governmental  positions.  China  supports,  be- 
sides a  host  of  minor  institutions  of  learning, 
the  University  of  Pekin,  whose  student  body 
nearly  outnumbers  that  of  our  two  largest 
universities  combined.  And  the  fundamental 
aim  of  all  her  education  has  been  not  so  much 
learning  as  behavior.  Hence  it  happens  that, 
in  some  respects,  the  Chinese  as  a  whole  are 
the  most  moral  people  in  the  world.  They 
are  taught  from  childhood  to  rely  on  reason 
rather  than  on  physical  force  for  the  vindica- 
tion of  their  rights.  So  high  is  the  standard  of 
business  ethics  that  a  paper  contract  is  not 
necessary  to  bind  a  Chinese  merchant.  Eti- 
quette is  scrupulously  observed  in  every  walk 
of  life,  making  a  regularly  organized  police 
force  unnecessary.  Politeness,  deference  to 
elders,  respect  for  authority,  are  conspicuous 
traits  in  all  classes  of  society.  These,  which 
are  among  the  acknowledged  marks  of  the  high- 
est possible  civilization,  these,  we  find  on  a 
national  scale  in  China. 

107 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

It  seemed  to  me  necessary  to  make  these 
preliminary  statements  because  we  of  the 
Occident  are  altogether  too  apt  to  think  of  the 
Chinese  as  a  barbarous,  or  semi-civilized  people 
remarkable  for  the  peculiar  arrangement  of 
their  hair/  their  yellow  skin  and  slanting 
eyes,  their  opium,  debauchery  and  dirt.  We 
forget  that  China  has  her  centres  of  culture 
and  refinement  as  well  as  her  slums,  and  that 
she  is  no  more  to  be  judged  by  the  denizens 
of  these  degraded  districts  than  is  America 
by  the  population  of  the  corresponding  quar- 
ters in  her  great  cities.  Let  it  be  remembered 
that  if  China  has  her  "coolie"  cooks  and  laun- 
dry folk  and  salmon-canners,  she  has  also  her 
magnificent  men,  of  the  stamp  of  Li-Hung- 
Chang,  who  has  immortalized  himself  in  the 
American  heart  by  his  touching  memorial  to 
General  Grant ;  men  of  the  stamp  of  Minister 
Wu,  who  fairly  electrified  an  immense  audi- 
ence in  Carnegie  Hall  by  his  candid  discussion, 

^  The  "queue"  was  forced  on  the  Chinese  by  the  Manchus  in 
1644 ;  but  in  response  to  the  modern  spirit  the  Manchus  themselves 
are  doing  away  with  the  queue. 

108 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

in  a  memorable  address,  of  the  relative  merits 
of  Confucianism  and  Christianity ;  ^  men  like 
Prince  Pung  Kwang  Yu,  author  of  a  most 
scholarly  and  exhaustive  essay  on  Confucian- 
ism, read  at  the  World's  Parliament  of  Re- 
ligions ;  men  of  the  caliber  of  the  regent, 
Prince  Ch'un,  who,  on  behalf  of  the  infant 
emperor,  on  the  second  day  of  December, 
1908,  inaugurated  a  new  era  in  Chinese  his- 
tory, issuing  a  decree  in  his  Majesty's  name, 
requiring  all  his  subjects,  on  pain  of  extreme 
penalty,  to  assist  in  the  gradual  rehabilitation 
of  the  empire.  And  in  this  wonderful  process 
of  reorganization  toward  democracy  we  note 
the  carefulness  and  caution,  the  far-sighted 
deliberation  with  which  the  work  is  being  done, 
as  contrasted  with  some  of  our  precipitate 
methods,  our  frequent  failure  to  "go  slow 
round  this  curve"  of  social  reform  and  the  fond 
reliance  of  great  masses  of  our  people  on  one  or 
another  "panacea"  for  a  complex  situation 
that  takes  time.     Out  of  its  own  national  social 

^  Christianity  was  introduced  into  China  by  the  Nestorians  in 
636  A.D. 

109 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

thinking  China  is  forming  a  new  social  idea; 
and  she  no  longer  looks  on  her  government, 
as  an  unchangeable  product  of  Nature,  but 
rather  as  a  progressive  product  of  the  national 
will,  her  development  depending  on  the  intelli- 
gent action  of  a  free  and  educated  people. 

But  towering  far  above  these  celebrities 
whose  names  I  have  mentioned,  and  above  all 
other  splendid  types  of  Chinese  manhood, 
stands  the  supreme  inspiration  of  the  eighty 
or  more  millions  who  to-day  profess  Confu- 
cianism, —  Kung-fu-tze,  the  Master  Kung, 
or,  as  we  have  learned  to  call  him,  in  the  Latin- 
ized form  of  his  name,  Confucius.  In  strik- 
ing contrast  to  the  little  we  know  of  Zoroaster's 
life  stands  the  unparalleled  fulness  of  detail 
concerning  the  life  of  Confucius.  From  our 
ultimate  sources  of  information  —  the  latest 
of  the  "Kings"  and  the  four  "Books"  —  we 
are  enabled  to  compile  biographical  facts  far 
outnumbering  those  of  any  other  of  the  great 
moral  leaders  of  the  Orient.  Typical  of  the 
details  concerning  his  life  that  have  been  re- 
corded I  quote  the  following  from   the  tenth 

110 


^«N 


?  // 


■% 


LAO-TZE. 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

book  of  the  "Lun  Yu"  :  "He  was  nice  in  his 
diet,  —  not  disliking  to  have  his  rice  dressed 
fine,  nor  to  have  his  minced  meat  cut  small. 
He  must  have  his  meat  cut  properly,  and  to 
every  kind  its  proper  sauce ;  but  he  was  not  a 
great  eater.  It  was  only  in  drink  that  he  laid 
down  no  limit  to  himself,  but  he  did  not  allow 
himself  to  be  confused  by  it.  On  occasion  of  a 
sudden  clap  of  thunder,  or  a  violent  wind,  he 
would  change  countenance.  At  the  sight  of  a 
person  in  mourning,  he  would  also  change 
countenance,  and  if  he  happened  to  be  in  his 
carriage,  he  would  bend  forward  with  a  re- 
spectful salutation.  His  general  way  in  his 
carriage  was  not  to  turn  his  head  round,  nor 
talk  hastily,  nor  point  with  his  finger.  He  was 
charitable.  When  any  of  his  friends  died,  if 
there  were  no  relations  who  could  be  depended 
upon  for  the  necessary  offices,  he  would  say,  'I 
will  bury  him.' "  ^ 

Confucius  was  born  in  the  year  551  B.C.  in 
the  principality  of  Lu  in  eastern  China  and  was 
thus  a  contemporary  of  Gotama.     He  was  the 

^  Chinese  Classics,  ed.  Legge,  Vol.  I,  p.  89. 
Ill 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

son  of  Shu-Liang-Ho,  an  old  but  robust  ex- 
ofBcer  of  the  Chinese  army  who  had  contracted 
a  childless  marriage  and  to  whom  a  concubine 
had  borne  a  daughter.^  When  about  to  marry 
again  he  sought  the  hand  of  one  of  the  three 
daughters  of  the  Yen  family.  The  father  of 
these  young  ladies  summoned  them  and  stated 
Shu's  desire,  adding  that  though  old  he  was 
yet  vigorous,  healthy,  of  noble  birth,  and  hold- 
ing a  high  position  in  the  government.  "  Which 
of  you  shall  I  offer  him?  "  he  asked.  The  two 
oldest  remained  silent,  but  the  third  said, 
"Father,  it  is  for  you  to  command  and  for  us 
to  obey."  To  which  he  replied,  "Very  well, 
then,  you  will  do."  And  so  this  maiden  of 
nineteen  became  the  wife  of  the  septuagenarian 
and  their  son  was  Confucius.  That  same 
filial  piety  which  the  youngest  of  Yen's  daugh- 
ters  exhibited  toward  her  father,   Confucius 


^  Concubinage  was  tolerated  out  of  respect  for  family  perpetua- 
tion. To  have  a  son  to  perpetuate  his  name  and  to  perform  the 
funeral  offices  at  his  death,  this  was  the  chief  desideratum  of  every 
Chinese  father.  To  be  without  male  offspring  justified  concubinage, 
but  it  was  regulated  according  to  position,  the  emperor  being  allowed 
nine  concubines,  the  ordinary  citizen  but  one. 

112 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

manifested  toward  his  mother,  for  whom  he 
seems  to  have  had  an  affection  exceeding  that 
for  his  own  son  and  daughter.  As  a  child 
Confucius  showed  a  pronounced  prochvity 
for  serious  study,  for  playing  at  festivals,  at 
the  postures  of  ceremony  and  the  arrangement 
of  sacrificial  vessels,  thus  bearing  out  the  fa- 
miliar Wordsworthian  epigram,  "The  child  is 
father  to  the  man."  At  fifteen  years  of  age 
he  had  already  acquired  an  enviable  reputation 
for  his  intellectual  attainments.  At  nineteen 
he  married  and  in  his  twentieth  year  he  was 
appointed  "Keeper  of  the  Provincial  stores." 
The  following  year  he  was  promoted  to  the 
Agricultural  Department  of  the  government 
and  made  "Superintendent  of  farms  and 
lands."  How  deeply  conscious  he  was  of  the 
dignity  of  his  office  and  the  duty  of  faithfully 
fulfilling  its  requirements  is  attested  by  many 
a  passage  in  the  sacred  books  of  Confucianism, 
showing  him  to  have  been  a  man  of  incorrup- 
tible honor  and  devoutly  consecrated  to  his 
ideals.  Holding  somewhat  unpopular  views 
on  questions  of  political  ethics  he  fearlessly 
I  113 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

uttered  them,  censuring  officials  and  parties 
regardless  of  results  to  himself.  With  a  splen- 
did courage  he  acted  as  a  public  censor  and 
paid  the  price  of  his  office  for  his  heroism. 
Forced  to  resign  his  position,  he  devoted  him- 
self to  travel,  and  for  thirty  years  went  from 
city  to  city,  proclaiming  those  principles  of 
political  and  moral  reform  which  later  were 
embodied  in  the  "Four  Books."  When  he 
had  reached  his  fiftieth  year  a  crisis  occurred 
in  the  affairs  of  Lu  and  he  was  recalled,  receiv- 
ing an  appointment  as  "magistrate"  of  the 
province.  This  afforded  him  opportunity  to 
test  the  practical  worth  of  some  of  his  teachings 
and  the  effect,  we  are  told,  bordered  on  the 
miraculous.  Under  his  administration,  the 
poor  were  properly  cared  for ;  helpless,  elderly 
people  were  treated  with  sympathy  and  wis- 
dom; crime  diminished;  war  was  discouraged 
and  even  the  "Magna  Charta"  was  antici- 
pated, for  Confucius  maintained  that  prison- 
ers had  a  right  to  trial  by  jury.  So  prosperous 
and  peaceful  was  the  principality  of  Lu  under 
the  Confucian  regime  that  the  princes  of  the 

114 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

neighboring  provinces  became  jealous  and 
contrived  to  undermine  the  success  of  their 
rival.  Knowing  the  King's  weakness  for  spec- 
tacular entertainment,  they  hired  eighty  cap- 
tivating dancing  girls,  bidding  them  present 
his  majesty  with  twenty  span  of  gorgeously 
caparisoned  horses  and  forthwith  entertain 
him  with  dance  and  song.  So  infatuated  was 
the  King  of  Lu  with  this  entertainment  that 
for  three  successive  days  he  gave  himself  over 
to  pleasure,  ignoring  all  the  duties  of  his  office 
and  giving  official  audience  to  no  one.  This 
behavior  so  disgusted  Confucius  that  he  re- 
signed as  magistrate,  declining  to  serve  under 
such  a  chief  executive  of  state.  Thus  the 
ingenious  scheme  of  the  jealous  princes  had  the 
desired  effect.  Having  surrendered  his  office 
Confucius  resolved  to  devote  the  remainder 
of  his  life  to  two  ends:  first,  the  gathering 
about  him  of  a  band  of  disciples  to  be  trained 
in  the  principles  of  personal  and  social  reform, 
and  second,  the  editing  of  the  sacred  books  of 
the  Chinese  religion.  Both  these  aims  he 
fulfilled  and  in  the  seventy-third  year  of  his 

115 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

age  he  died,  leaving  a  legacy  of  governmental 
principles,  moral  precepts  and  a  personal 
example  that  have  enriched  and  ennobled 
countless  lives  within  and  without  the  confines 
of  China.  I  have  it  on  the  authority  of 
Minister  Wu  that  the  influence  of  Confucius 
is  on  the  increase,  that  his  name  is  held  in  high- 
est veneration  throughout  the  Chinese  empire, 
not  by  Confucianists  alone,  but  also  by  Tao- 
ists,  Buddhists  and  representatives  of  the 
other  religions,  all  of  them  protected  by  the 
government.  It  is  said  that  the  spirit  of  Con- 
fucius, like  an  atmosphere,  pervades  the  thought 
and  life  of  the  four  hundred  million  inhabit- 
ants of  China.  We  may  trace  his  influence 
in  three  distinct  directions.  It  appears  first, 
in  his  capacity  as  editor  of  the  five  "Kings" 
or  '*  Canons,"  which  constitute  the  canonical 
scriptures  of  Confucianism.  The  word  "King" 
is  of  textile  origin  and  signifies  the  warp- 
threads  across  which  the  woof  are  thrown  in 
weaving  the  web.     The  five  Kings  are  :  — 

1.  I-King,  "Canon  of  Changes,"  the  most 
ancient  of  the  five,  an  occult  interpretation  of 

116 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

Nature  and  life  by  means  of  "trigrams"  in 
sixty-four  combinations  to  each  of  which  a 
symboHcal  meaning  is  attached. 

2.  Shu-King,  *' Canon  of  History,"  an  his- 
torico-ethical  work  extolHng  the  virtues  of 
ancient  model  kings  as  contrasted  with  cer- 
tain despots.  The  narrative  dates  back  to 
3000  B.C.  but  the  early  portions  are  so  fraught 
with  legendary  embellishment  as  to  lose  all 
historical  credibility. 

3.  Shi-King,  "Canon  of  Odes,"  a  collection 
of  three  hundred  and  five  odes,  introducing 
us  to  the  most  ancient  culture  of  China,  many 
of  these  compositions  having  been  sung  by 
poets  centuries  before  they  were  committed 
to  writing,  as  the  record  itself  testified. 

4.  Li-Ki-Ki7ig,  "Canon  of  Rites,"  consist- 
ing of  rules  for  the  ceremonial  to  be  observed 
by  gentlemen  in  all  the  various  relations  of 
private  life,  a  book  that  takes  us  into  the  very 
heart  of  Chinese  society  as  it  alreadj^  was, 
centuries  before  Confucius.  This  book  has 
its  analogue  in  the  "Chou-li"  written  at  a 
much  later  day   and  dealing  with  the  cere- 

117 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

monial  for  public  life,  as  the  "Li-Ki"  with  that 
for  private  life.  "As  an  educator  of  the  na- 
tion," says  Professor  Hirth,  "the  'Chou-li'  is 
unparalleled  in  the  literature  of  the  world." 

5.  Ch'un-Ts'iu,  "Spring  and  Autumn,"  an- 
nals (700-550  B.C.)  of  the  province  of  Lu,  and 
mainly  the  work  of  Confucius  himself.  The 
vicissitudes  through  which  these  "Kings" 
passed  have  been  graphically  described  by  a 
member  of  the  "Han"  dynasty,  written  about 
the  time  that  Jesus  was  born.  He  relates 
how,  after  the  death  of  Confucius,  disputes 
arose  as  to  the  authenticity  of  the  text,  owing 
to  the  appearance  of  various  editions;  how  in- 
cendiarism, actuated  by  the  desire  to  keep  the 
people  in  ignorance,  destroyed  the  sacred 
literature  of  the  nation;  how,  in  the  second 
century  before  our  era,  a  successful  attempt  at 
remedying  the  unspeakable  loss  was  made  by 
an  edict  commanding  all  loyal  Chinese  to  assist 
in  the  work  of  restoration,  a  commission  having 
been  appointed  to  superintend  the  work  of 
collecting  and  editing  all  that  could  be  recov- 
ered.    And  it  is  from  the  first  century  prior 

H8 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

to  our  era  that  the  Chinese  "Classics,"  as  we 
now  have  them,  date. 

Great  as  was  the  influence  of  Confucius  in 
his  capacity  as  editor,  it  was  still  more  marked 
in  his  capacity  as  teacher.  This  is  made  mani- 
fest in  the  "Four  Books,"  the  uncanonical 
scriptures  of  Confucianism.  They  may  be 
regarded  as  the  text-book  of  Confucianism,  for 
though  written  after  his  death  by  disciples 
and  devotees,  they  present  the  Master's 
thought  throughout.     They  are  :  — 

1.  Lun-Yuy  "Discourses,"  or  "Analects," 
presenting  in  twenty  books  the  essential  teach- 
ing of  Confucius  on  the  "national "  virtue,  filial 
piety  as  the  foundation  of  family  life  and 
of  that  larger  family  life  represented  by 
the  state  with  its  government,  to  which  obe- 
dience is  required  even  as  of  children  to  their 
parents. 

2.  Ta-Hio,  "The  Great  Learning,"  a  treatise 
on  self-culture,  grounded  on  the  conception  of 
knowledge  as  a  means  of  promoting  social  re- 
form. 

3.  Chung-Yung,  "Doctrine  of  the  Mean," 

119 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

the  middle  path  between  extremes,  which  the 
philosopher  recommends. 

4.  Mong-Tzi,  "Mencius,  the  Philosopher," 
who  lived  from  372  to  289  B.C.  and  was  the 
stoutest  champion  of  Confucian  doctrines  in 
his  day.  This  book  bears  much  resemblance 
to  the  "Lun-Yu"  though  more  particularly 
concerned  with  "equilibrium"  and  "harmony" 
in  government.  For  fuller  information  on 
these  "Four  Books"  let  me  refer  you  to  James 
Legge's  noble  edition  of  them,  in  both  Chinese 
and  English,  under  the  title  "Chinese  Classics." 

But  it  was  in  his  capacity  as  an  exemplar  that 
the  influence  of  Confucius  was  most  conspicu- 
ous and  counted  for  most  in  the  lives  of  his 
contemporaries.  Like  the  philosopher  and 
emperor,  Marcus  Aurelius,  who  tried  to  hold 
up  the  falling  Roman  empire  by  the  power  of 
personal  example,  himself  illustrating  in  all 
humility  self-control,  self-reverence  and  self- 
realization,  so  Confucius  cherishing  a  like 
belief  in  the  eflScacy  of  example,  as  the  most 
powerful  reforming  agent,  sought  so  to  radiate 
a  beneficent  influence.     He  rightly  held  that 

120 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

of  all  reforming  agencies  there  is  none  equal 
to  the  contagion  of  personality.  Inspiration 
always  counts  for  more  than  instruction  when 
the  problem  is  one  of  transfiguring  common- 
place lives.  The  best  thing  any  teacher  can 
do,  better  than  anything  he  can  teach  is  to 
communicate  moral  earnestness  and  conse- 
cration. And  were  we  to  select  from  among  his 
characteristics  the  one  Confucius  esteemed 
most  highly  of  all,  it  would  undoubtedly  be 
his  calm,  persistent  reliance  on  the  power  of 
example  as  superior  to  every  other  agency  ca- 
pable of  refining  and  elevating  human  life. 

To  understand  the  rise  of  Confucius  as  a 
great  moral  leader,  the  cause  and  character  of 
his  leadership,  we  must  go  back  in  Chinese 
history  to  the  reign  of  the  famous  "Chou" 
dynasty  which  lasted  from  1124  to  249  B.C. 
During  this  period  political,  social  and  moral 
conditions  obtained  that  provoked  negative 
protest  and  demanded  positive  reforms.  Early 
in  the  eighth  century  before  our  era  there  were 
signs  of  a  decline  of  power  in  the  central  gov- 
ernment. Restless,  self-seeking  territorial  lords 

121 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

plotted  the  invasion  and  usurpation  of  sover- 
eign authority.  They  soon  made  of  China  a 
battle-ground  for  the  contending  hosts  of  po- 
litical ambition  and  greed.  For  China  was  di- 
vided, much  as  was  Germany,  into  small  states, 
each  of  which  had  to  subordinate  its  feudatory 
government  to  imperial  authority.  But  pre- 
cisely as  the  historical  map  of  Germany  shows  a 
shifting  of  territorial  boundary  lines  during 
the  Thirt^^  Years'  War  and  long  after,  so  during 
the  Chou  dynasty,  a  similar  but  much  aggra- 
vated situation  was  developed,  reaching  its 
most  anarchic  and  demoralized  condition  about 
the  middle  of  the  sixth  century.  Nor  was  the 
general  disorder  confined  to  the  political  and 
social  life  of  the  people;  it  extended  to  their 
intellectual  life.  For,  into  the  arena  of  con- 
tending powers  swarmed  philosophers  of  va- 
rious schools  with  their  conflicting  theories  of 
the  universe  and  of  life,  each  seeking  the  pat- 
ronage and  support  of  one  or  another  of  the 
territorial  lords.  Then  it  was  that  Confucius 
appeared  as  an  independent  teacher  and  re- 
former, setting  forth  the  principles  on  which  a 

122 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

strong,  stable,  peaceful,  ethical,  imperial  gov- 
ernment must  be  reared,  the  conditions  on 
which  the  right  ordering  of  states  depends  and 
the  moral  rules  that  serve  so  to  regulate  indi- 
vidual life  as  to  make  it  conducive  to  personal 
and  national  welfare. 

Examining  the  ancient  religious  records 
which  he  subsequently  edited,  he  observed 
that  under  Yao  and  Shun,  twenty  centuries 
before  his  day,  the  nation  was  peaceful,  pros- 
perous, happy.  Semi-mythical  paragons  of 
perfection  as  these  kings  were,  Confucius 
believed  that  their  reign  was  the  golden  age  of 
Chinese  history  and  their  exemplary  lives  the 
root  cause  of  it.  Consequently,  to  imitate  their 
example  and  reproduce  their  doctrines  of  po- 
litical and  social  life  was  to  Confucius  the  true 
solution  of  the  problems  which  conditions 
under  the  Chou  dynasty  had  raised.  Thus, 
you  observe,  he  disclaimed  originality.  He 
held  that  this  was  a  power  never  to  be  claimed 
by  any  one  under  any  circumstances,  since  Yao 
and  Shun  were  the  real  and  ultimate  sources 
to  which  all  truth  and  virtue  must  be  traced, 

123 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

In  them  he  saw  the  originators  of  what  he 
merely  passed  on  to  later  generations.  His 
mission  he  felt  was  that  of  a  humble  trans- 
mitter of  what  he  had  found  in  the  ancient 
scriptures  of  his  people.  "His  brain  was  but 
a  phonograph,"  as  Professor  Hirth  has  said, 
recording  the  wisdom  of  the  first  sages  for  the 
benefit  of  his  contemporaries  and  posterity. 
And  just  as  this  traditionalism  made  Confu- 
cius, so  in  turn  did  Confucius  make  China. 
No  sooner  had  he  incorporated  in  himself  the 
race  to  which  he  belonged  than  it  felt  the  reac- 
tion of  his  mighty  personality,  eighty  million 
souls,  or  more,  turning  to  him  as  he  had  turned 
to  Yao  and  Shun.  As  indicative  alike  of  his 
intellectual  humility  and  his  sense  of  gratitude 
to  these  illustrious  teachers  of  antiquity  I 
select  the  following  quotations  from  the  "Four 
Books  "  :  — 

"In  the  way  of  the  superior  man  there  are 
four  things,  to  not  one  of  which  have  I  as  yet 
attained.  —  To  serve  my  father,  as  I  would 
require  my  son  to  serve  me:  to  this  I  have  not 
attained;    to  serve  my  prince,  as  I  would  re- 

124 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

quire  my  minister  to  serve  me :  to  this  I  have 
not  attained ;  to  serve  my  elder  brother,  as  I 
would  require  my  younger  brother  to  serve  me  : 
to  this  I  have  not  attained ;  to  set  the  example 
in  behaving  to  a  friend,  as  I  would  require 
him  to  behave  to  me :  to  this  I  have  not  at- 
tained." 

"The  Master  said :  The  sage  and  the  man  of 
perfect  virtue ;  —  how  dare  I  rank  myself 
with  them  ?  It  may  simply  be  said  of  me, 
that  I  strive  to  become  such  without  satiety, 
and  teach  others  without  weariness." 

"  The  Master  said:  A  transmitter  and  not  a 
maker,  believing  in  and  loving  the  ancients,  I 
venture  to  compare  myself  with  our  old  P'ang."* 

In  the  preceding  lecture  we  asked,  what  is 
the  chief  end  of  man  ?  We  compared  the  an- 
swer given  in  the  Catechism,  with  what  Go- 
tama  and  Zoroaster  would  have  said.  But  the 
answer  Confucius  would  have  given  has  noth- 
ing in  common  with  any  of  these.  **To  glorify 
God  and  enjoy  him  forever"  would  have  been 
an  end  altogether  too  remote,  metaphj^sical  and 

1  Legge,  Chinese  Classics,  Vol.  I,  pp.  394,  206,  427,  195. 

125 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

mystical  to  satisfy  him.  To  stop  the  process  of 
reincarnation,  whether  by  the  Hindu  or  by  the 
Buddhistic  method,  was  an  end  wholly  foreign 
to  the  order  of  ideas  on  w^hich  Confucius  had 
been  brought  up.  Zoroaster's  answer,  —  to 
cooperate  with  Ahura-Mazda  the  primeval 
good  principle  in  the  struggle  for  victory  over 
Angro-Mainyus,  the  source  and  sustainer  of 
all  evil  —  this,  too,  was  an  end  altogether 
alien  to  the  reflections  of  Confucius.  Having 
for  his  prime  and  ever  present  concern  the 
perfecting  of  the  relations  that  exist  between 
man  and  man,  his  answer  would  have  been  ex- 
pressed in  terms  of  that  all-absorbing  problem. 
To  him  the  chief  end  of  man  was  to  become  a 
desirable  member  of  society  and  the  main  func- 
tion of  Confucius  as  a  great  moral  leader  lay  in 
pointing  the  way  to  the  attainment  of  this  end. 
He  directed  attention  to  the  word  "recipro- 
city" as  that  "on  which  the  whole  of  life  may 
proceed,"  adding,  "what  you  do  not  wish  done 
to  yourself  do  not  unto  others."  He  advocated 
for  each  individual,  whatever  his  calling  or  his 
position  in  society,  the  practice  of  "the  five 

126 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

cardinal  virtues":  justice,  temperance,  gen- 
erosity, humility,  propriety  (a  sense  of  the 
fitness  of  things).  He  divided  the  possible 
relations  of  man  into  five  groups,  attaching  to 
each  specific  duties  and  defined  "the  superior 
man"  as  one  who  recognized  these  relations 
and  fulfilled  the  duties  of  such  of  the  five  as 
came  into  the  realm  of  his  experience.  Sover- 
eign and  subject,  husband  and  wife,  parent 
and  child,  older  and  younger  brothers  and  sis- 
ters, friend  and  friend.  As  typing  the  duties 
identified  with  each  of  these  five  relations  he 
bade  sovereigns  be  benevolent  and  subjects 
loyal,  husbands  devoted  and  wives  affection- 
ate, parents  wise  and  children  obedient,  older 
brothers  and  sisters  considerate  of  younger 
and  the  younger  deferential  toward  the  older, 
friend  faithful  to  friend. 

Given  the  fulfilment  of  these  various  duties, 
scrupulous  observance  of  all  the  rules  which 
Confucius  prepared  for  the  different  depart- 
ments of  life,  and  there  would  ensue  of  neces- 
sity, he  believed,  that  regulation  of  the  indi- 
vidual, the  family  and  tlie  state  which  guaran- 

127 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

tees  to  the  whole  nation  "  the  three  greatest 
blessings,  —  material  prosperity,  learning  and 
virtue."  Yea,  there  would  be  seen  again  in 
society,  what  glorified  the  kingdoms  of  Yao 
and  Shun,  —  a  reproduction  in  human  life  of 
the  serene,  harmonious  order  visible  in  the  solar 
system  and  in  the  regular  operations  of  Na- 
ture. Only  through  these,  Confucius  held, 
does  "Heaven"  speak.  That  order  in  Nature 
provides  man  with  a  pattern  of  moral  conduct. 
Man,  he  believed,  has  no  higher  lesson  to  learn 
than  that  taught  him  by  Nature,  viz.  to  repro- 
duce in  his  own  personal  life  and  in  society 
an  order  as  calm  and  unbroken  and  harmoni- 
ous as  is  hers.  Just  here  let  me  quote  the  fol- 
lowing passages  from  the  "Analects"  and  the 
"Great  Learning"  in  confirmation  of  what  has 
been  said  touching  the  chief  end  of  man :  — 

"Ever  think  of  your  ancestors,  cultivate 
virtue,  strive  to  accord  your  dispositions  to 
Nature ;  so  shall  you  be  seeking  great  happi- 
ness. 

"Does  Heaven  speak?  The  four  seasons 
pursue  their  courses  and  all  things  are  con- 

128 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

tinually  being  produced  in  order.  Equilibrium 
is  the  root  from  which  harmony  springs.  Har- 
mony is  the  universal  path  which  all  creatures 
should  pursue.  Let  the  states  of  harmony  and 
equilibrium  exist  in  perfection  and  a  happy 
order  will  prevail  and  all  things  flourish. 

*'The  ancients  who  wished  to  illustrate 
virtue  throughout  the  kingdom,  first  ordered 
well  their  own  States.  Wishing  to  order  well 
their  States,  they  regulated  their  families. 
Wishing  to  regulate  their  families,  they  first 
cultivated  their  persons.  Wishing  to  culti- 
vate their  persons,  they  first  rectified  their 
hearts.  Wishing  to  rectify  their  hearts,  they 
first  sought  to  be  sincere  in  their  thoughts. 
Wishing  to  be  sincere  in  their  thoughts,  they 
first  extended  to  the  utmost  their  knowledge. 
Such  extension  of  knowledge  lay  in  the  inves- 
tigation of  things.  Things  being  investi- 
gated, knowledge  became  complete.  Their 
knowledge  being  complete,  their  thoughts 
were  sincere.  Their  thoughts  being  sincere, 
their  hearts  were  then  rectified.  Their  hearts 
being  rectified,  their  persons  were  cultivated. 

K  129 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

Their  persons  being  cultivated,  their  families 
were  regulated.  Their  families  being  regu- 
lated, their  States  were  rightly  governed. 
Their  States  being  rightly  governed,  the  whole 
kingdom  was  made  tranquil  and  happy."  ^ 

Concerning  belief  in  God,  Confucius  was 
exceedingly  reserved.  He  "preferred  not  to 
speak,"  and  his  reserve  was  due,  in  part,  to  the 
influence  of  the  ancient  Chinese  religion  which, 
like  the  government,  was  patriarchal,  only 
the  Emperor  worshipping  "Heaven,"  while 
the  common  people  worshipped  only  their 
ancestors.  Partly,  also,  this  reserve  was  due 
to  an  innate  agnostic  tendency  of  Confucius' 
own  mind.  We  read  that  "among  the  sub- 
jects on  which  the  Master  did  not  speak  were 
spiritual  beings  and  miraculous  things."  Un- 
like Gotama,  who  was  an  atheist  in  the  sense 
that  he  "left  vacant  the  place  above  the  finite 
gods,"  —  denying  the  existence  of  a  supreme 
permanent  Reality  (Brahma),  believing  all 
things  and  beings  to  exist  only  in  a  state  of 
flux,  —  Confucius  recognized  a  Power  higher 

^  Legge,  Chinese  Classics,  p.  357. 
130 


ST^"^? 


CONFUCIUS. 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

than  man,  related  to  man.  But  knowing 
nothing  of  that  Power  he  preferred  to  be  silent 
on  the  subject.  Plenty  of  passages  there  are 
in  his  own  "Ch'un-ts'iu-King"  and  in  the 
*'Four  Books"  to  prove  him  a  deeply  religious 
man,  conscious  of  dependence  on  an  inscru- 
table Power.  But  being  inscrutable,  Confucius 
invariably  used  the  cosmic  term  *'Tien" 
(Heaven)  in  preference  to  the  anthropomor- 
phic term  "Shang-ti"  (Highest  Lord).  It  is 
related  that  when  imprigbned  in  the  city  of 
Ku'ang  with  a  group  of  disciples  and  it  seemed 
to  them  that  release  would  be  indefinitely 
postponed,  Confucius  reminded  them  that 
"Heaven  protects  the  culture"  which  he  and 
they  represent.  "What  harm  can  come  to 
those  protected  by  Heaven.'^"  On  another 
occasion,  when  threatened  with  assassination 
and  his  disciples  urged  him  to  flee,  the  Master 
said,  "Heaven  has  endowed  me  with  virtues, 
what  have  I  to  fear  from  oppressors  .^^ "  On 
another  occasion  he  said,  "Alas  !  there  is  no 
one  that  knows  me."  Tsze-Kung  said,  "  What 
do  you  mean  by  thus  saying  that  no  one  knows 

131 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

you  ?  "  He  replied,  "  I  do  not  murmur  against 
Heaven.  I  do  not  grumble  against  men.  My 
studies  lie  low,  and  my  penetration  rises  high. 
But  there  is  Heaven,  —  that  knows  me  !"  ^ 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  attitude  of 
Confucius  toward  theism  saved  millions  of 
Chinese  from  the  degrading  superstitions  and 
magic  that  mark  Taoism  and  Chinese  Bud- 
dhism.^ 

In  conformity  with  his  conception  of 
"Heaven"  Confucius  held  that  petitional 
prayer  is  inefficacious  and  therefore  not  to  be 
practised.  "My  prayers,"  he  said,  "were 
offered  up  long  ago,"  meaning  that  he  con- 
sidered prayers  to  consist  in  living  a  good  life 
and  obeying  the  dictates  of  conscience.  "He 
who  sins  against  Heaven  has  no  place  to  pray," 
he  continues,  meaning  that  even  spirits  have 
no  power  to  bestow  blessings  on  those  who  have 
sinned  against  the  decrees  of  Heaven.  The  use 
of  flowers  and  the  offering  of  food  to  "spirits" 

»  Op.  cit,  pp.  98-99. 

^  Buddhism  was  introduced  into  China  about  65  a.d.  and  since 
then  has  undergone  almost  total  transformation  there. 

132 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

that  were  thus  worshipped,  Confucius  regarded 
as  desirable  only  for  "  spiritual  purification," 
tending  to  make  one  more  susceptible  to  in- 
fluences from  the  realm  of  spirits.  For  Con- 
fucius accepted  the  ancient  Chinese  belief  in  a 
hierarchy  of  Nature-spirits  corresponding  to 
the  political  organization  of  the  country.  Just 
as  the  various  officials  of  the  empire  stand 
under  the  emperor,  so  under  the  heaven-spirit, 
highest  lord,  "Shang-ti,"  there  exist  the  spirits 
of  the  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  the  rivers,  the 
forests,  etc.,  together  with  the  ancestral  spirits 
of  families,  ranked  according  to  the  social 
status  of  the  people.  There  being  such  a 
hierarchy  of  spirits,  it  follows  that  all  persons 
cannot  be  permitted  to  worship  these  spirits 
indiscriminately.  Only  the  emperor  can  wor- 
ship Heaven.  Only  governors  of  provinces 
can  worship  the  spirits  of  mountains  and  rivers. 
Only  magistrates  and  officials  below  the  gov- 
ernor can  worship  the  minor  orders  of  spirits. 
The  common  people  can  worship  only  the 
spirits  of  their  ancestors  and  are  required  to 
do  so.     Hence  in  every  Confucian  home  there 

133 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

is  a  "hall  of  the  ancestors"  where  tablets  are 
placed  bearing  the  names  of  the  ancestors, 
father  and  mother  conducting  the  ceremony. 
This  consists  of  praises  to  the  spirits  of  the 
ancestors  and  the  offering  of  flowers,  followed 
by  a  family  meal  to  which  the  spirits  are  in- 
vited and  at  which  they  are  represented  by 
one  of  the  boys  of  the  family,  dressed  in  his  dead 
grandfather's  clothes,  to  symbolize  the  pres- 
ence of  the  ancestral  spirits.  The  emperor, 
no  less  than  the  common  people,  is  required 
to  worship  the  spirits  of  his  ancestors  and  the 
supreme  semi-annual  festival  is  that  in  honor 
of  the  royal  ancestors,  conducted  by  the  em- 
peror himself,  assisted  by  the  chief  dignitaries 
of  the  realm.  At  the  common  meal  one  of 
the  imperial  grandsons,  duly  robed  in  an  an- 
cestral royal  gown,  represents  the  spirits  of 
ancestral  royalty. 

To  this  "spring  and  autumn  festival"  must 
be  added  the  annual  ceremony  in  commemo- 
ration of  Confucius,  celebrated  in  the  red-walled 
temple  of  Confucius  at  Pekin  and  conducted  by 
the  emperor.    Before  the  tablet  of  the  Master  he 

134 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

utters  the  following  invocation :  "  Great  art 
thou,  O  perfect  Sage.  Thy  virtue  is  full,  thy 
doctrine  complete.  Among  mortal  men  there 
has  not  been  thy  equal.  All  Kings  honor  thee. 
Thou  art  our  pattern.  Reverently  have  the 
sacrificial  vessels  been  set  out.  Full  of  awe  we 
sound  our  drums  and  bells."  Two  character- 
istics of  these  ceremonies  are  to  be  particularly 
noted.  First,  there  is  nothing  propitiative 
or  intercessory  in  them,  as  compared  w^ith 
Christian  prayers  and  offerings ;  they  are 
purely  commemorative,  springing  from  a  grate- 
ful recognition  of  indebtedness  to  the  past. 
Second,  they  are  thoroughly  typical  of  the 
practical,  ethical,  non-theological  nature  of 
Confucianism ;  a  state-religion  of  the  most 
pronounced  and  thoroughgoing  type,  em- 
ploying civic  officials  where  other  religions 
hire  priests  and  acknowledging  in  these  officials 
no  supernatural  power  or  meditorial  functions, 
but  solely  that  of  conducting  the  commemora- 
tive exercises ;  a  religion  without  theology, 
church  or  priesthood ;  a  religion  so  identified 
with  the  national  government  as  on  the  one 

135 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

hand  to  havegivenit  its  unrivalled,  unsurpassed 
persistence  through  five  thousand  years,  and 
on  the  other  hand  to  have  denied  it  that  sense 
of  infinite  relations  and  infinite  possibilities 
without  which  no  religion  can  ever  permanently 
satisfy.  Just  as  Venice  paid  for  the  stability 
of  her  oligarchy  the  terrible  price  of  unproduc- 
tiveness in  original  literature,  art,  philosophy 
and  poetry  of  the  first  rank,  so  China  paid  the 
price  of  spiritual  sterility  for  her  unification  of 
religion  and  the  political  state. 

With  reference  to  belief  in  a  future  life 
Confucius  again  took  an  agnostic  position, 
one  altogether  consistent  with  his  attitude  to 
theism  and  the  intense  practicality  of  his 
dominant  ethical  interests,  concerned,  as  they 
were,  solely  with  terrestrial  reform.  Like 
Horace  Greeley,  whom  Minister  Wu  quoted 
in  his  Carnegie  Hall  address,  Confucius  felt 
that  "they  who  discharge  the  duties  of  this 
life  will  find  they  have  no  time  to  peer  into 
life  beyond  the  grave ;  better,  therefore,  attend 
to  each  life  in  its  proper  order."  All  specula- 
tion on  the  hereafter  was  to  him  profitless  and 

136 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

futile.     He  behaved  toward  questions  on  man's 
state  after  death  very  much  as  did    Gotama 
and  Jesus,  pointing  to  the  path  of  righteous- 
ness here  and  now,  reminding  them  that  this 
is  man's  first  concern  and  that  in  consecrated 
devotion  thereto  he  can  safely  trust  the  future 
to    be    generous    and    just.     A    characteristic 
passage   from    his    sayings    is    the   following : 
"Chi-Lu  asked  about  serving  the  spirits  of  the 
dead,  and    the   Master  said,  'While  you  are 
not  able  to  serve  men,  how  can  you  serve  their 
spirits.'^'     The  disciple  added,  'I  venture   to 
ask    about    death,'    and    he    was    answered, 
'While  you  do  not  know  Hfe,  how  can   you 
know  about  death  ?'''     Still  more  striking  is  a 
conversation  with  another  disciple,  recorded 
in  the  "Narratives  of  the  School."      "Tsze- 
Kung  asked  him,  saying,  'Do  the  dead  have 
knowledge   (of  our  services,  that  is),   or  are 
they  without  knowledge  ? '     The  Master  re- 
plied, 'If  I  were  to  say  that  the  dead  have  such 
knowledge,  I  am  afraid  that   filial  sons  and 
dutiful  grandsons  would  injure  their  substance 
in  paying  the   last   offices   to   the   departed; 

137 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

and  if  I  were  to  sav  that  the  dead  have  not 
such  knowledge,  I  am  afraid  lest  unfilial  sons 
should  leave  their  parents  unburied.  You 
need  not  wish,  Tsze,  to  know  whether  the 
dead  have  knowledge  or  not.  There  is  no 
present  urgency  about  the  point.  Hereafter 
you  will  know  it  for  yourself.'  "  ^ 

But  being  a  practical  people,  it  is  not  unusual 
to  find  Confucianists,  when  confronted  with 
business  or  domestic  misfortune,  or  with 
death,  employing  Taoist  or  Buddhist  priests 
to  bring  their  magical  auguries  to  bear  on  the 
crisis,  or  to  chant  their  requiems  for  the  de- 
parted, as  the  case  may  be.  In  other  words, 
not  being  certain  of  what  comes  after  death, 
and  their  own  religion  providing  no  ceremonial 
related  to  the  soul's  future  welfare,  they  find 
it  practicable  and  desirable  to  resort  to  reli- 
gions that  make  a  specialty  of  securing  eternal 
bliss  in  the  world  to  come.  Commendable  as 
such  eclecticism  may  be,  it  none  the  less  betrays 
a  fatal  defect  in  the  Master's  religion  and  the 
probability   of   a   neo-Confucianism   rising  in 

1  Oj).  cit.,  pp.  95,  99. 
138 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

China,  equal  to  meeting  a  spiritual  need  which 
no  one  of  the  three  ruling  religions  of  China 
supplies  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  best  ele- 
ments of  the  nation. 

If  Gotama's  system  may  be  described  as  a 
religion  of  the  heart,  because  of  his  emphasis 
on  self -renouncing  love;  if  the  sj-stem  of 
Zoroaster  may  be  designated  a  religion  of  the 
hand,  because  of  the  stress  laid  upon  purifying, 
saving  work ;  then  that  of  Confucius  may  be 
called  a  religion  of  the  head,  because  intellec- 
tual mastery  of  his  principles  and  rules  of 
morality  was  the  surest  guarantee  of  an  ideal 
social  order.  He  firmly  believed  that  if  people 
would  but  reverently  memorize  and  master 
these  precepts,  the  intellectual  task  would  so 
react  on  the  will  as  to  produce  the  moral  life. 
People,  he  used  to  say,  are  just  like  water 
which  takes  exactly  the  shape  of  the  dish  into 
which  it  is  poured.  Such  a  dish  he  saw  in  his 
system  of  rules  and  if  only  the  people  could  be, 
as  it  w^ere,  poured  into  the  dish,  the  desired 
moral  result  would  ensue.  But  alas,  between 
knowing  what  is  right  and  doing  it,  there  lies 

139 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

love  of  the  right  and  the  will  to  do  it.  And 
until  the  affections  and  will  are  reckoned  with 
and  duly  trained,  the  Confucian  plan  must 
remain  but  partially  complete.  So  far  did  he 
go  in  his  reliance  on  rules  as  to  advocate  the 
assuming  of  certain  physical  postures  expres- 
sive of  moral  qualities,  —  such  as  humility, 
reverence,  obedience,  —  believing  that  the  very 
soul  of  the  individual  would  become  informed 
with  these  graces  of  character  of  which  the 
postures  were  the  external  signs.  Whatever 
degree  of  value  is  to  be  attached  to  such  in- 
tellectual and  physical  self-discipline  as  Con- 
fucius enjoined,  it  will  be  conceded  that  this 
faith  of  his  in  the  efficacy  of  rules  and  attitudes 
to  achieve  the  desired  moral  end,  this  method 
of  working  from  the  circumference  to  the  cen- 
tre, coupled  with  the  influence  of  ancestor- 
worship,  explains  in  large  measure  that  age- 
long arrested  development  of  China  to  which 
she  has  recently  awakened  and  from  which  she 
is  steadily  freeing  herself. 

In  bold  and  striking  contrast  to  Confucius 
stood  his  older  contemporary,  the  philosopher 

140 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

and  state  historian,  Lao-Tze.  He  was  fifty 
years  old  when  Confucius  was  born.  The  story 
is  told  that  when  the  latter  visited  the  state 
capitol  to  consult  the  archives  of  which  Lao- 
Tze  was  the  custodian,  the  venerable  sage  took 
occasion  to  inform  him  that  his  ideas  were 
erroneous  and  his  reform-method  futile,  add- 
ing that  it  would  be  well  to  discard  his  arti- 
ficial dignity  and  ceremonial  manner,  because 
when  a  man  has  real  modesty  and  humility 
he  does  not  seek  to  give  them  external  expres- 
sion. In  this  rebuff  Lao-Tze  struck  the  real 
defect,  the  vulnerable  spot  in  the  Confucian 
system.  On  its  positive  side,  the  thought  of 
Lao-Tze  was  that  man  should  aim  to  possess 
that  inward  deep  morality  of  the  spirit  which 
makes  him  indifferent  to  rules  and  spontane- 
ously intuitively  guides  him  to  what  is  right. 
Just  as  Jesus,  in  his  discussion  with  the  tricky 
lawyer,  took  the  ground  that  he  who  has  the 
spirit  of  love  to  God  and  love  to  man  in  his 
heart  has  that  out  of  which  all  good  actions 
will  spontaneously  flow,  so  Lao-Tze  held  that 
there  is  in  every  man  the  "Tao,"  that  divine 

141 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

spirit  which  has  its  counterpart  in  the  external 
world  as  the  basis  of  Nature's  order  and  har- 
mony, and  in  devotion  to  which  "the  incom- 
plete achieves  completion,  and  the  ideal  of 
perfection,  realization."  Thus  there  exists 
"the  eternal  Tao,"  bodiless,  omnipresent, 
prior  even  to  God,  as  conditioning  the  total 
universe;  the  "ur-grund"  of  all  that  is.  Be- 
ing omnipresent,  it  is  immanent  in  man  as  his 
reasoning,  virtue-acting  power,  operating  to 
will  and  to  do  the  transcendent  divine  will  of 
the  Tao.  Let  man  yield  himself  to  its  holy 
prompting  and  "act  non-assertion";  let  him 
never  interfere  with  Nature's  way  or  seek  to 
alter  the  nature  of  things,  but  rather  practise 
self-surrender  to  the  Tao,  and  he  will  find  that 
"in  quietness  and  confidence  shall  be  his 
strength." 

Like  Confucius,  Lao-Tze  believed  that  man's 
chief  end  is  to  reproduce  in  all  the  personal  and 
social  relations  of  life  the  moral  prototype 
furnished  by  Nature's  order  and  harmony,  but 
he  differed  from  Confucius  as  to  the  means 
whereby  this  end  should  be  reached.     Not  by 

142 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

setting  up  a  system  of  rules  and  regulations 
and  adjusting  souls  to  them,  but  rather  by 
developing  inner  poise,  purity,  passivity,  i.e. 
self-subordination  to  the  promptings  of  "Tao," 
which  makes  the  soul  superior  to  rules,  did 
Lao-Tze  propose  to  achieve  the  desired  end. 
Such  was  the  ethical  mysticism  of  the  vener- 
able philosopher,  as  I  gather  it  from  the  one 
only  book  he  wrote,  —  the  "Tao-te-King," 
or,  "Classic  of  Reason  and  Virtue." 

Lao-Tze  was  an  ascetic,  a  recluse;  he  went 
into  voluntary  exile,  disgusted  with  the  po- 
litical and  social  disorder  of  his  time.  Con- 
fucius was  a  man  of  the  world,  yet  without 
worldliness,  through  personal  example  influ- 
encing his  fellow-men  for  good. 

Lao-Tze  was  an  unshorn,  tattered,  half- 
starved  hermit ;  the  occupant  of  a  hollow  rock 
or  cave  in  the  wilderness.  Confucius  was  a 
sleek,  well-fed,  comfortable  philosopher  and 
statesman ;  enjoying  the  favor  of  princes  and 
kings. 

Lao-Tze  sought  to  reform  each  human  soul 
at  the  roots  of  his  being,  to  purify  the  heart, 

143 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

the  inner  springs  of  conduct,  believing  that  all 
external  relations  would  right  themselves  as  a 
result.  Confucius  began  at  the  other  end, 
with  etiquette,  propriety,  good  manners,  moral 
rules,  believing  that  the  heart  would  thereby 
be  reformed.  Lao-Tze  determined  man's  life 
from  within;  Confucius,  from  without.  The 
former  was  subjective,  the  latter  objective  in 
attitude  and  method.  The  one  operated  from 
the  centre  to  the  circumference,  the  other  from 
the  circumference  to  the  centre.  Lao-Tze 
was  an  anarchist  in  the  philosophical  sense, 
opposed  to  governing  and  in  favor  of  sponta- 
neity and  independence  in  thought  and  con- 
duct. Confucius  was  a  monarchist,  wishing 
to  have  government  penetrate  to  the  very 
heart  of  the  individual,  the  family  and  the 
state. 

Lao-Tze  cared  for  wisdom,  not  scholarship. 
Confucius  cared  for  scholarship  and  hoped  to 
get  wisdom  through  learning. 

Lao-Tze's  system  called  for  much  patient 
and  hard  thinking,  for  analysis  of  the  con- 
densed ethical  truths  of  the  "Tao-te-King," 

144 


CONFUCIUS    AND    LAO-TZE 

offered,  as  they  were,  without  commentary  or 
explanation  and  interspersed  with  metaphysical 
argument.     The  code  of  Confucius  called  for 
no  such  mental  and  physical  strain.     It  was 
concrete,    intelligible,    practical;     free    from 
speculative   elements,  serviceable   as   a   text- 
book of  instruction  for  public  schools  and  ac- 
tually was  made  the  basis  of  all  civil  service 
examinations,  the  sole  gateway  to  office.     No 
wonder,  then,  that  in  view  of  these  differences, 
Confucius  as  a  moral  leader  eclipsed  Lao-Tze, 
though  much  of  the  latter's  message  is  of  tran- 
scendent worth  and  singularly  suited  to  our 
o\NTi  age  with  its  passion  for  external  results 
that  are  tangible,  its  devotion  to  ameliorating 
social  and  economic  conditions  as  contrasted 
with  the  more  radical  devotion  to  that  which  is 
inpalpable  and  imperishable,  the  infinite  and 
eternal    worth    in   man.     Yet,    after   all,    the 
supreme  reliance  of  Confucius,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  not  on  rules  alone,  nor  on  rules  plus  biog- 
raphies, but  on  personal  beneficent  example. 
This  he  held  superior  to  every  other  known  re- 
formatory agent.     Such  having  been  his  con- 

L  145 


GKEAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

viction,  it  should  be  noted  further  that  the 
lifting  power  of  his  example  was  due,  not  so 
much  to  his  exalted  character  and  great  learn- 
ing, as  to  his  striving  for  an  ideal  of  virtue 
and  of  scholarship  which  he  felt  he  had  not  yet 
attained.  Others,  seeing  that  striving,  were 
moved  to  a  like  endeavor.  So  is  it  ever  with 
the  truly  great  teacher.  Not  his  intellectual 
or  moral  attainments,  but  his  spiritual  pas- 
sion to  possess  more  of  infinite  truth  and  right, 
this  it  is  that  determines  his  lifting  power  over 
other  lives.  So  was  it  with  Confucius.  His 
greatest  work  of  art  was  not  his  edition  of 
the  "Kings"  nor  the  composition  of  the 
"Spring' and  Autumn  Annals";  it  was  the 
life  in  which  he  practised  the  precepts  taught 
in  the  books. 


146 


THE  PROPHETS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  THE 
COMMONWEALTH  OF  MAN 


THE  PROPHETS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  THE 
COMMONWEALTH  OF  MAN 

TN  the  second  lecture  of  this  course  we  saw 
^  the  part  played  by  the  "Rishis"  in 
India,  forty  centuries  ago;  those  poet-priests 
who  in  exquisitely  modulated  verse  inter- 
preted the  world  in  terms  of  spirit,  seeing  in 
Nature  the  manifestation  of  countless  intelli- 
gent powers  or  spirits.  Still  to-day  do  those 
*'Vedic"  bards  make  their  appeal.  Despite 
their  polytheism,  long  since  outgrown,  they 
call  us  away  from  the  crude  materialism  which 
in  its  crass  conceit  imagines  it  has  dispelled 
the  mystery  from  matter  and  explained  crea- 
tion in  terms  of  "Kraft  und  Stoff." 

And  when  the  successors  of  those  poet- 
priests  departed  from  the  simplicity  and  purity 
of  the  ancient  Vedic  faith,  becoming  engrossed 
in  ceremonialism  and  priestcraft,  in  anti- 
democratic caste  exclusiveness   and  debilitat- 

149 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

ing  asceticism,  then  it  was  that  Gotama,  the 
Buddha,  appeared.  He  called  a  halt  at  this 
religious  externalism  and  inaugurated  a  mighty 
ethical  reaction,  mapping  out  a  systematic 
course  in  self-discipline,  many  of  the  features  of 
which  are  as  useful  for  us  to-day  as  they  were 
for  the  Indians  of  fifteen  centuries  ago. 

In  the  third  lecture  we  saw  how  Zoroaster 
inspired  the  oppressed  peasants  of  Bactria  to 
drain  the  marshes,  irrigate  the  dry  lands, 
destroy  noxious  insects,  maintain  personal 
purity  in  thought,  word  and  deed,  because, 
said  he,  through  such  physical  and  moral  work 
the  power  of  the  arch  demon,  Ahriman,  the 
source  of  all  evil,  will  be  destroyed  and  the 
victory  of  the  supreme  and  everlasting  good 
God  Ormuzd,  be  guaranteed.  Here,  too,  we 
found  a  gospel  not  without  its  elements  of 
practical  value  for  our  own  developing  civili- 
zation. 

The  fourth  lecture  was  devoted  to  Confucius, 
statesman,  moralist,  exemplar,  exponent  of  the 
gospel  that  man's  supreme  purpose  should  be  to 
reproduce  in  all  the  various  relations  of  public 

150 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

and  private  life  the  beautiful,  calm,  unbroken 
order  of  Nature. 

We  come  now  to  a  group  of  great  moral 
leaders  identified,  not  with  the  Aryan,  or  the 
Turanian,  but  with  the  Semitic  branch  of  the 
human  family ;  the  prophets  of  Israel.  They 
are  the  noblest  ancient  representatives  of  a 
people  whose  story  extends  over  thirty-five 
centuries  and  is,  without  exception,  the  most 
remarkable  in  the  history  of  the  nations ;  a 
people,  homeless,  suspected,  persecuted ;  wan- 
derers over  the  face  of  the  earth,  seeking  a  per- 
manent home  and  finding  none;  a  people 
subjected  throughout  the  Christian  centuries 
to  gross  indignities  from  the  people  of  Jesus 
and  Paul,  both  of  whom  were  Jews ;  a  people 
victimized  by  prejudice  so  deep  and  inhuman 
that  even  little  children  of  refined  Jewish 
parents  have  come  home  from  school  crying 
because  of  the  abuse  heaped  on  them  by  the 
children  of  parents  whose  finest  religious  in- 
heritances are  from  Moses  and  his  successors ; 
a  people  whose  religious  patriotism  has  been  so 
intensified  by  persecution  that  even  the  most 

151 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

liberal  among  them  insist  on  remaining  Jews 
so  long  as  Christians  make  it  a  reproach  to  be  a 
Jew;  a  people  who  founded  the  first  univer- 
sities of  continental  Europe  and  who,  in  an 
age  of  superstition,  when  faith  was  blind  and 
ignorance  a  passport  to  Paradise,  fostered  edu- 
cation, advanced  the  arts  and  sciences  and  who 
count  among  the  contributors  to  our  civiliza- 
tion, Astruc  and  Ibn  Ezra,  Maimonides  and 
Moses  Mendelssohn,  Spinoza,  Heine,  Auer- 
bach  and  the  Montefiores ;  a  people  number- 
ing to-day  eleven  millions  in  all ;  and  of  the 
one  million  or  more,  here  in  Greater  New 
York,  it  must  be  said  that,  as  a  class,  they  are 
the  most  self-respecting,  self-reliant,  self-sup- 
porting, law-abiding  portion  of  our  mixed 
population. 

Just  whence  the  ancestors  of  this  people 
came  is  still  one  of  the  vexed  problems  of  eth- 
nology. Yet  we  do  know  that  in  historical 
times  they  occupied  the  Tigris-Euphrates 
Valley,  and  that  after  a  brief  sojourn  on  the 
borders  of  Egypt  they  marched  northward  to 
Canaan  where  they  settled  down  to  agricul- 

152 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

tural  life  and  organized  that  religion  which, 
like  those  of  India,  Persia  and  China,  under- 
went development ;  its  evolution  ranging  from 
the  crude  polytheism  and  uncivilized  morality 
of  patriarchal  times  to  the  pure  monotheism 
and  ethics  of  the  post-exilian  prophets. 

First  among  the  great  Hebrew  leaders  whose 
names  have  come  down  to  us  is  Abraham.  In 
the  patriarchal  age  he  overshadows  all  other 
personalities.  Unfortunately  the  facts  of  his 
life  and  work  are  so  enmeshed  in  legendary 
material  as  to  forbid  our  forming  any  trust- 
worthy opinions  concerning  his  achievements. 
Indeed,  there  are  those  who  deny  the  historicity 
of  Abraham  altogether,  believing  the  name  to 
be  that  of  a  tribe  rather  than  of  an  individual. 
He  is  represented  in  the  Old  Testament  as  the 
first  Jew  to  leave  the  ancestral  home,  to  go  from 
"Ur  of  the  Chaldees"  westward  and  lay  the 
foundations  of  a  new  nation.  He  is  also  rep- 
resented as  making  a  covenant  or  contract 
with  "  Yahweh"  according  to  which  He  will  be 
their  God  and  further  their  interests  as  His 
chosen    people,    provided    they    acknowledge 

153 


greAt  religious  teachers 

him   as   their   God   and   fulfil  his  command- 
ments. 

But  the  most  commanding  figure  among  all 
the  early  Palestinian  teachers  and  leaders  is 
Moses,  the  father  of  Hebrew  liberty  and  legis- 
lation. It  would  carry  us  too  far  afield  were 
we  to  review  the  story  of  his  life  and  work, 
engaging  and  instructive  though  it  is.  After 
his  death,  the  separate  tribes  which  had  formed 
a  loose  confederation  found  that  only  in  solid 
union  is  there  strength.  Accordingly,  about 
the  year  1060  B.C.  a  Hebrew  monarchy  was 
organized  with  Saul  as  the  first  king.  For 
nearly  a  century  prosperity  and  peace  were  so 
in  the  ascendant  that  later  generations  looked 
back  upon  this  period  as  the  golden  age  of 
Hebrew  history.  But  when  Solomon's  son, 
Rehoboam,  refused  to  reduce  the  taxes  that 
had  been  levied  for  the  building  of  the  temple 
and  when  twice  in  succession  the  candidate 
for  the  throne  was  chosen  from  among  the 
southern  tribes,  the  northern  group  rebelled. 
The  result  was  a  division  of  the  United  King- 
dom into  "Israel "and  "  Judah,"  anorthernand 

154 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

a  southern  kingdom,  the  former  dating  from  960 
to  722  B.C.  and  the  latter  outHving  the  north- 
ern kingdom  by  a  century  and  a  half,  to  585  B.C. 
Both  kingdoms,  during  the  first  hundred 
years  of  their  existence,  developed  a  strong 
and  many-sided  civilization,  yet  not  without 
its  dark  and  dangerous  features.  For  the 
record  tells  us  that  along  with  developing 
prosperity  there  was  a  slackening  of  devotion 
to  Yahweh  and  his  commandments,  that  with 
the  increase  of  culture  came  the  curse  of  lux- 
ury, that  acquaintance  with  the  licentious 
practices  of  the  Canaanitish  religion  corrupted 
public  and  private  morals,  that  when  all  the 
people  aided  in  the  tilling  of  the  soil,  there  was 
no  poverty  to  be  abolished,  whereas  the  growth 
of  the  commercial  spirit  and  the  tendency  of 
land  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  a  few  were  pro- 
ductive of  disastrous  consequences.  Credi- 
tors snatched  children  from  their  parents  to 
extort  the  money  they  could  not  otherwise 
obtain  (2  Kings  iv.  1).  Hunger  compelled 
some  who  were  in  poverty  to  put  themselves 
voluntarily  under  bondage  for  bread  (1  Sam. 

155 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

ii.  5).     The  law  tried  to  ameliorate  the  lot  of 
such  slaves  by  limiting  their  servitude  to  six 
years,  but  it  was  not  always  observed  (Jer. 
xxxiv).     David  and    some  of    his  successors 
seized  lands  from  their  subjects  and  gave  the 
property  to  favorite  nobles  (1  Sam.  viii.  14). 
The  story  of  Naboth  (1  Kings  xxi)  illustrates 
one  of  the  many  acts  of  injustice  of  those  days 
and  the  rapaciousness  of  the  rich  who  "added 
field  to  field,"  dispossessing  the  small  land- 
holders and  confiscating  the  common  lands. 
The   record   tells   of   merchants   reclining  on 
ivory  couches  eating  young  calves  and  drink- 
ing  costly   wines   from   golden   bowls   to   the 
music  of  the  timbrel  and  the  viol,  revelling 
in  luxuries   while  they   squeezed  high  prices 
from  their  customers  and  "sold  the  poor  into 
slavery  for   their  debt   on   a  pair  of   shoes " 
(Amos  ii.  6;    vi.    6).     Nay  more,  the  record 
tells  also  of  a  war-cloud,  at  first  no  bigger  than 
a  man's  hand,  spreading  westward  from  As- 
syria till  it  hung  over  this  brilliant,  prosperous, 
luxurious,  cultured  Hebrew  civilization  of  the 
eighth  century. 

156 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

Then  it  was  that  there  appeared  in  both  the 
northern  and  the  southern  kingdom  a  suc- 
cession of  great  moral  leaders  known  as  proph- 
ets. They  were  not  soothsayers,  diviners, 
seers,  clairvoyants,  trance  speakers.  Rather 
were  they  the  successors  of  this  class  in  Israel. 
Not  fore-tellers  but  forth-tellers  they  were, 
predicting,  not  on  the  basis  of  any  occult  prac- 
tices, but  solel}'-  on  the  basis  of  study  of  the 
economic,  political,  social,  moral  and  religious 
conditions  of  their  time.  Statesmen  they  were, 
of  the  highest  type,  recalling  the  sacred  con- 
tract that  had  been  made  between  Israel  and 
Yahweh,  the  terms  of  which  had  been  grossly 
violated  by  the  people  for  whose  benefit  the 
covenant  had  been  made.  They  had  allowed 
themselves  to  think  that  just  because  such  a 
covenant  had  been  made  Yahweh  was  insepa- 
rably bound  up  with  the  national  welfare,  for- 
getting all  the  while  that  their  God  is  a  right- 
eous God,  "the  Holy  One,"  and  that,  as  such, 
he  demands  righteousness  as  the  sine  qua  non 
of  Divine  protection  and  bounty.  Hence  the 
immediate  function   of  the  prophets   was   to 

157 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

draw  attention  to  this  neglected  aspect  of  the 
covenant  and  to  interpret  the  varying  vicissi- 
tudes of  the  nation  in  the  hght  of  it.  When 
prosperity  came,  it  meant  a  fulfilment  of  Yah- 
weh's  promise;  when  adversity  crossed  their 
path,  it  was  the  sign  of  failure  on  the  part  of  the 
chosen  people  to  fulfil  their  part  of  the  contract, 
a  chastising  that  meant  also  a  preparation  for 
future  blessings.  And  the  greater  the  mis- 
fortunes of  the  nation,  the  more  fixed  and  in- 
tense became  the  faith  of  the  prophets  that 
Yahweh  would  not  forsake  his  people,  but 
through  the  discipline  of  suffering  and  sorrow 
bring  them  back  to  himself  and  his  command- 
ments and  so  fit  them  for  a  glorious  future. 
In  opposition  to  the  traditional  practice  of 
fleeing  to  the  altar  and  doubling  the  sacrifices 
in  time  of  danger  or  disaster,  the  prophets 
preached  the  utter  futility  and  folly  of  such 
externalism.  They  held  steadfastly  to  their 
conviction  that  at  such  times  the  sole  source 
of  safety  lies  in  the  practice  of  ethical  religion, 
and  warned  the  people  again  and  again  that 
the  precursors  of  national  death  are  injustice, 

158 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

greed,  pride  and  wantonness.  These  prophets 
did  not  wait  to  be  hired  to  preach  and  they 
could  not  be  bought  to  keep  still.  Again  and 
again  did  they  embarrass  kings,  and  constantly 
were  their  relations  with  the  masses  strained. 
Instead  of  chiming  in  with  the  jingoism  of  their 
day,  they  cried,  "Wash  you,  make  you  clean, 
put  away  the  evil  of  your  doings  from  before 
mine  eyes,  saith  the  Lord."  No  other  nation 
ever  produced  an  order  of  prophets.  The 
finest  flower  of  Athenian  thought  was  devoted 
to  philosophy,  literature  and  art.  The  genius 
of  ancient  Rome  spent  itself  in  the  develop- 
ment of  law.  But  the  noblest  representatives 
of  Israel  were  consecrated  to  the  interests  of 
an  ethical  religion. 

Just  how  far  Elijah  and  Elisha  represented 
the  typical  Hebrew  prophet  it  is  difficult  to 
say  because  the  story  of  their  work  has  come 
down  to  us  in  an  idealized  form,  largely  over- 
laid with  legendary  lore.  Deeply  conscious 
as  they  were  of  the  sinfulness  of  idolatry,  and 
successful  as  they  were  in  uprooting  and  anni- 
hilating the  Tyrian  Baal-worship,  by  means 

159 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

of  the  overthrow  of  the  Omri  dynasty,  of 
which  Ahab  was  the  head,  nevertheless  they 
seem  to  have  had  no  consciousness  of  national 
moral  guilt  or  of  its  relation  to  national  mis- 
fortune. Having  condemned  and  extirpated 
idolatry,  they  seem  to  have  thought  that  they 
had  no  further  mission  to  fulfil.  At  least 
they  devote  themselves  only  to  optimistic 
preaching  of  Yahweh's  favor  and  power,  ad- 
vising continuous  trust  in  His  goodness  and 
might.  The  distinctive  characteristic  of  the 
typical  prophet,  viz.  his  belief  that  national 
misfortune  is  always  superinduced  by  national 
unrighteousness,  that  a  nation  morally  repre- 
hensible is  unworthy  to  be  blessed,  this,  it 
would  seem,  was  wanting  in  the  message  of 
the  prophets  prior  to  Amos,  i.e.  from  Samuel 
to  Micajah.  True,  Elijah  announced  "the 
judgment  of  Yahweh"  and  Micajah  gave  a 
magnificent  exhibition  of  a  prophet  declining 
to  promise  Yahweh's  favor  except  to  those 
who  did  what  was  right.  But  these  examples 
at  best  are  only  the  exceptions  that  prove 
the  rule.     When,  however,  the  nation  came 

160 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

into  closer  relations  with  her  foreign  neigh- 
bors, notably  Assyria  and  Egypt,  when  danger 
threatened  from  these  quarters,  when  increas- 
ing prosperity  brought  demoralizing  luxury  in 
its  train,  when  the  future  of  the  nation  began 
to  grow  dark  and  doubtful,  seeing  that  the 
all-powerful  Yahweh  allowed  the  enemies  of 
Israel  to  harass  her,  then  it  was  that  the 
supreme  type  of  the  prophetic  order  appeared. 
Prophets,  they  were,  who  interpreted  Hebrew 
history  in  terms  of  moral  conduct,  who  ex- 
plained the  nation's  tribulation  as  due  to  vio- 
lation of  the  moral  commandments  of  "the 
righteous  One,"  who  recognized  Yahweh,  not 
only  as  "the  Mighty  One,"  but  also  as  "the 
Holy  One,"  and  therefore  requiring  that  His 
people  be  holy  if  they  would  prosper. 

First,  in  chronological  order,  of  this  highest 
type  of  Hebrew  prophets  and  first  of  the  so- 
called  writing  prophets  —  those  who  com- 
mitted their  utterances  to  writing  —  was 
Amos.  We  have  no  books  from  Samuel, 
Nathan,  Abijah,  Elijah,  Elisha,  Mica  j  ah. 
The  reason   is   that   writing   for   other   than 

M  161 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

commercial,  or  industrial,  or  legal  purposes 
had  not  yet  come  into  vogue.  Moreover,  the 
predictions  of  these  prophets  were,  for  the 
most  part,  brief,  disconnected  utterances, 
related  only  to  passing  occurrences.  But  by 
the  year  800  B.C.  writing  for  literary  purposes 
had  begun  and  though  Amos  may  have  dic- 
tated his  discourses,  they  were  written  in  the 
first  quarter  of  the  eighth  century  before  our 
era.  According  to  the  superscription  of  his 
book  Amos  was  a  cattle  owner  and  rancher, 
but  moved  by  the  divine  call  of  the  higher 
patriotism  to  quit  his  ranch,  he  went  to  town 
as  the  spokesman  of  Yahweh,  as  the  con- 
secrated reformer  of  a  demoralized  com- 
munity (Amos  vii.  14,  15).  He  breaks  in 
upon  a  religious  meeting  at  Bethel  and 
frankly  tells  the  people  that  Yahweh  cares 
nothing  for  their  services,  that  he  hates  their 
Sabbath  observance  when  on  week  days  they 
practise  injustice  and  inhumanity.  Time  was 
when  "the  day  of  Yahweh"  meant  the  day 
of  Israel's  triumph  over  her  enemies.  To 
Amos,  however,  it  meant  the  day  when  Yahweh 

162 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

would  chastise  Israel  by  means  of  a  foreign 
foe  because  His  people  are  corrupt,  because 
greed  and  oppression  rule  the  land  (ii,  v). 
Surveying  the  political,  economic  and  moral 
conditions,  he  predicts  captivity  and  other 
calamity  for  Israel  (vi-ix).  Yet  he  is  not 
utterly  without  hope.  At  the  close  of  his 
withering  arraignment  of  the  nation  he  allows 
himself  to  say  that  Judah  shall  be  established 
in  prosperity  as  in  the  days  of  old  and  Israel 
be  restored  to  its  land  and  dwell  there  for- 
ever (ix.  11-15).  And  this  utterance  is  the 
germ  of  that  Messianic  hope  which  was 
steadily  developed  in  the  course  of  the  follow- 
ing seven  centuries.  Contemporary  with 
Amos,  though  fifteen  years  his  junior  in  the 
field  of  prophecy,  was  Hosea.  Both  addressed 
themselves  chiefly  to  the  northern  kingdom. 
But  whereas  Amos  was  stern,  relentless, 
fiery  in  his  appeal  for  national  reformation, 
Hosea  was  tender,  compassionate,  gentle; 
not  arguing  but  pleading  with  his  people, 
passionately  beseeching  them  to  mend  their 
ways.     Hosea  had  been  deceived  by  his  wife, 

163 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

and  he  uses  her  infidelity  as  a  simile  to  rebuke 
Israel's  infidelity  to  Yahweh.  In  terms  of 
the  conjugal  relation  Hosea  pleads,  nor  is  he 
wholly  without  hope  of  Israel's  redemption. 
For  even  as  in  his  own  home  a  reconciliation 
had  been  brought  about  with  his  wife,  so 
might  this  prefigure  the  reconciliation  that 
shall  come  to  Israel,  forestalling  divorce  from 
Yahweh.  Hosea  saw,  as  did  Amos,  the  in- 
evitable invasion  of  the  Assyrians  and  pre- 
dicted their  taking  Israel  into  captivity  (ix. 
3).  Like  Amos,  too,  his  final  word  is  one  of 
love  and  hope,  picturing  Yahweh  as  healing 
the  nation's  backsliding,  turning  his  anger 
away,  becoming  "as  dew  unto  Israel,"  who 
shall  thereupon  "blossom  as  a  lily  and  cast 
forth  his  roots  as  Lebanon"  (xiv.  4-5). 

In  the  year  722  B.C.  the  prediction  of  Amos 
and  Hosea  was  fulfilled.  The  Assyrian  King, 
Sargon,  successor  of  Shalmanezer,  captured 
Samaria,  the  capital  of  the  northern  king- 
dom, taking  away  the  great  majority  of  the 
citizens  to  settle  in  Samaria  and  the  sur- 
rounding country    (2  Kings  xvii.  24).      Thus 

164 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

Israel  became  a  dependency  of  Assyria,  the 
first  in  a  succession  of  foreign  subjugations 
which,  while  depriving  the  Hebrews  of  national 
independence,  proved  favorable  to  their  re- 
ligious growth  and  this,  in  turn,  provoked 
their  tireless  resistance  of  foreign  oppression. 

In  the  southern  kingdom,  contempora- 
neous with  Amos  and  Hosea,  were  Isaiah  and 
Micah.  Isaiah  is  commonly  referred  to  as 
the  first  Isaiah,  to  distinguish  him  from  later 
prophets  whose  utterances  have  been  incor- 
porated with  his  in  the  book  that  bears  his 
name.  He  preached  in  Jerusalem  from  740 
to  700  B.C.  (Is.  vi.  1).  He  had  seen  the 
capture  of  the  northern  kingdom.  He  had 
watched  his  own  native  Judah  threatened 
with  invasion  by  a  coalition  of  the  king  of 
Israel  and  the  king  of  Damascus.  Now  he 
saw  signs  of  an  Assyrian  invasion  and  advised 
his  king  to  steer  clear  of  foreign  alliances  and 
trust  Yahweh  to  take  care  of  his  people,  for 
He  would  yet  usher  in  "the  glory  of  Judah'* 
by  the  aid  of  a  descendant  of  David  (ix.  6,  7). 
But  Hezekiah  rejected  the  counsels  of  Isaiah. 

165 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

He  boldly  entered  into  an  alliance  with 
Egypt,  only  to  meet  with  defeat  at  the  hands 
of  Sennacherib,  whose  invasion  culminated  in 
Judah's  subjection  to  Assyria.  In  vain  did 
Isaiah  call  the  people  to  repentance  and 
righteousness,  which  alone  could  save.  Re- 
liance on  the  efficacy  of  sacrifices  continued 
as  before;  the  morality  fundamentally  essen- 
tial to  prosperity  and  peace  was  not  practised; 
trust  in  the  omnipotence  of  the  national  God 
grew  weak,  and  in  consequence  Yahweh's  favor 
was  withheld.  Such  was  Isaiah's  diagnosis 
of  the  situation  and  the  language  and  imagery 
in  which  he  clothed  it  stands  unsurpassed  in 
Hebrew  literature  for  vigor,  eloquence  and 
depth  of  religious  sentiment  (i,  v,  x,  xi). 

Micah,  the  younger  contemporary  of  Isaiah, 
had  much  in  his  character  corresponding  to 
what  we  saw  in  Hosea ;  a  sad,  passionate, 
intense  nature,  overpowered  by  the  corrup- 
tion of  society  and  its  impending  fate,  yet 
not  without  hope  for  a  day  of  better  things 
(iv.  1-5).  He  too,  like  Isaiah,  expected  the 
early  coming  of  a  king  of  David's  line,  and 

166 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

though  in  Christian  times  it  was  thought  that 
these  prophets  referred  to  Jesus,  the  context 
and  tone  of  their  predictions  furnish  no 
warrant  for  this  assumption.  Corresponding 
Lo  what  we  read  in  the  first  chapter  of  Isaiah's 
book  is  the  sixth  chapter  of  Micah's,  showing 
how  the  supreme  indignation  of  these  prophets 
concerned  the  painful  contrast  between  the 
profession  of  the  people  at  their  ceremonial 
worship  and  the  shocking  practices  of  their 
daily  lives.  What  boots  it,  says  Micah,  that 
you  sacrifice  to  Yahweh  ?  Even  though  a 
man  should  give  his  first-born  son  for  a 
guilt-offering,  it  would  avail  him  nothing. 
*'He  hath  showed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good ; 
for  what  doth  Yahweh  require  of  thee,  but 
to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy  and  to  walk  in 
humility  before  thy  God"  (vi.  8). 

Reading  the  books  of  these  four  prophets 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  sins  against 
which  they  inveighed,  one  is  instantly  im- 
pressed by  the  similaritj^  of  these  sins  to 
those  conspicuous  in  our  own  civilization. 
First   and  foremost   among  the   sinners   who 

167 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

come  under  the  condemnation  of  the  prophets 
are  certain  monopolists.  They  extort  high 
prices  from  the  poor  and  show  no  benevo- 
lence or  good  will  toward  those  who  are  un- 
able to  protect  themselves  or  to  meet  the 
high  cost  of  living.  Then  there  are  certain 
retail  dealers  who  cheat  in  the  buying  and 
selling  of  their  goods,  whose  yard-sticks  are 
short  of  the  standard  measure  and  whose 
weights  are  false.  Judges,  there  are,  who 
accept  bribes,  rendering  deceitful  decisions 
for  the  reward  they  will  reap.  Even  prophets 
are  found  with  mercenary  motives,  profes- 
sionally consulted  by  kings  and  deliberately 
predicting  good  fortune  for  the  sake  of  the 
liberal  fee  that  will  follow.  Priests,  alas, 
there  are  who  have  no  scruples  about  divert- 
ing to  their  own  pockets  money  contributed 
for  temple  repairs.  Society  people  there  are, 
guilty  of  gross  sensualism,  of  indulgence  in 
carousals  and  revelries  that  stir  the  poor  to  re- 
bellion. Women,  "  walking  with  haughty  mien 
and  wanton  eyes,"  overadorned  "with  chains 
and  bracelets,  head  tires  and  sashes,  rings  and 

168 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

jewels,  hand-mirrors  and  festal  robes,"  these, 
Isaiah  declares,  will  be  smitten  by  Yahweh 
and  "branding  take  the  place  of  beauty." 

How  familiar  the  list  of  evil-doers  sounds  ! 
How  true  it  is  that  these  prophets  though 
dead  yet  speak  !  What  a  veritable  mine  of 
moral  inspiration  their  sermons  are,  with 
their  powerful  appeal,  seeking  to  save  the 
souls  of  men  from  their  pitiable  bondages, 
their  fettering  selfishnesses,  their  humiliating 
ambitions.  How  this  old,  old  call  for  per- 
sonal morality,  for  singleness  of  heart  and 
purity  of  mind  comes  home  to  our  modern 
civilization  with  its  feverish  anxieties,  its 
degrading  slaveries,  its  paralyzing  devotion  to 
"the  things  that  are  seen  and  transient,"  its 
thoughtless  disregard  of  "the  things  that  are 
unseen  and  eternal,"  its  passion  for  tangible 
palpable  results,  its  blindness  to  the  only 
results  that  are  of  deep  and  permanent 
worth  !  Assuredly  must  we  feel  with  the 
lamented  James  Darmesteter  that  "to  go 
back  to  the  prophets  of  Israel  is  not  to  retro- 
grade,  but   to   progress,"  because   they  were 

169 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

ahead  of  their  time  as  well  as  abreast  of  it, 
because  they  saw  that  the  true  life  of  a  people 
consists  in  their  devotion  to  the  moral  ideal, 
and  that  without  such  devotion  worship  is 
mere  mummery  and  prosperity  animalism. 
Here  is  a  moral  message  that  answers  the 
immediate  need  of  our  time  better  than  any 
classical  masterpiece  of  antiquity.  And  while 
we  all  agree  with  Matthew  Arnold  in  his  plea 
for  "sweetness  and  light"  in  our  life,  yet 
more  needed  to-day  is  that  righteousness, 
that  sincerity,  that  conscience,  which  these 
great  moral  leaders  in  Israel  made  the  burden 
of  their  appeal. 

Passing  from  the  prophets  of  the  eighth 
century  to  those  of  the  seventh,  we  note 
Nahuni  and  Zephaniah,  both  of  whom  saw 
the  waning  of  Assyrian  power  and  predicted 
its  fall  as  a  punishment  for  the  cruelty 
and  oppression  practised  upon  the  people 
of  Yahweh.  Then  follows  Habakkuk,  giving 
point  to  the  prophecy  of  his  predecessors  by 
declaring  that  the  Chaldeans  (Babylonians) 
are  to  overthrow  the  Assyrians.     This  they 

170 


MOSES. 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

did  in  006  B.C.,  Judah  thereby  becoming 
a  Babylonian  dependency.  But  rebellion 
breaks  out  among  the  Judseans  and  Nebu- 
chadrezzar, the  young  king  of  Babylon, 
threatens  to  besiege  Jerusalem  and  carry  off 
her  people  to  his  capital  on  the  Euphrates. 
And  now  it  is  that  we  are  introduced  to  the 
master  prophet  of  the  century,  perhaps  of  all 
the  centuries,  at  once  the  most  magnificent 
and  the  most  pathetic  personality  in  ancient 
Israel.  Recall  the  main  political  and  religious 
events  that  transpired  toward  the  close  of  the 
seventh  century.  Egypt  had  forced  Judah 
to  pay  tribute,  only  to  be  herself  laid  low  by 
Babylon.  Babylon  in  turn  came  into  posses- 
sion of  Judah  as  a  result  of  the  joint  victory 
of  the  Medes  and  Babylonians  over  the 
Assyrians.  Rebellion  in  Jerusalem  followed, 
endangering  the  safety  of  the  city.  Manasseh, 
king  of  Judah,  in  the  course  of  his  fifty-five 
years'  reign  had  undone  all  the  religious  re- 
forms of  his  predecessor  Hezekiah.  He  had 
installed  a  variety  of  foreign  idolatrous  cults, 
reestablished  the  Canaanitish  worship  of  Baal 

171 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

and  the  Ashera  images,  introduced  sun-wor- 
ship and  worship  of  the  "hosts  of  heaven" 
and  rebuilt  the  "high  places"  his  father  had 
destroyed.  In  short,  the  political  and  re- 
ligious situation  was  such  as  to  shake  the 
faith  of  Jerusalem's  citizens  as  never  before. 
Only  one  man  there  was  who  faltered  not  nor 
feared  in  this  crisis  of  the  nation's  history ; 
one  who  takes  rank  as  the  greatest  statesman 
in  the  annals  of  Jerusalem,  the  most  august 
and  potent  personality  of  the  Chaldean  period, 
the  noblest  jBgure  in  ancient  Hebrew  history, 
dean  of  the  faculty  of  Hebrew  prophets  — 
Jeremiah.  His  mission  it  was  to  proclaim 
unpopular  truths,  to  defy  public  opinion,  to 
rebuke  kings  and  counsellors,  to  champion 
hopeless  minorities,  to  exercise  gratuitous, 
fearless  censorship  over  municipal  morals,  to 
mourn  the  degeneracy  of  cabinets  and  priest- 
hoods, to  see  the  subjugation  of  his  people  by 
armed  foes  from  without  and  scheming  dema- 
gogues from  within.  Yet  not  once  does  he 
falter  or  fail  in  fealty  to  his  high  calling,  not 
once   does   he   blemish   his   stainless   crest  of 

172 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

consecration  by  compromise  with  truth  or 
right,  but  preserves  his  integrity  to  the  bitter 
end.  Daring  he  was  in  his  protests  against 
wrong,  dominated  by  an  heroic  imprudence, 
because  his  tender  heart,  sensitive  as  the 
strings  of  a  Judsean  harp,  was  cut  to  the 
quick  by  the  tribulations  of  his  people. 
Faithless  though  they  were  to  their  God  and 
to  his  Law,  Jeremiah  never  lost  faith  in 
their  regenerative  power.  To  the  very  last 
he  served  them  as  a  prophet,  with  tireless 
patience  and  deathless  hope.  Statesman  that 
he  was  he  foresaw  the  rising  power  of  Baby- 
lon, and  realizing  that  military  resistance 
was  futile,  he  had  the  moral  courage  to  advise 
physical  submission  to  the  foe.  But  the 
patriotism  of  a  portion  of  the  populace  was 
of  a  cheaper  kind,  expressing  itself  in  the  cry 
for  rebellion  and  the  breaking  of  their  treaty 
with  Babylon.  Whereupon  Jeremiah  put  a 
wooden  yoke  about  his  neck  to  symbolize  the 
duty  of  the  hour,  namely,  surrender  to  a  brief 
Babylonian  captivity ;  brief  because  Yahweh 
would  bring  speedy   deliverance   when   chas- 

173 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

tisement  had  done  its  purifying  work  in  the 
national  heart.  But  an  impatient,  fiery  mem- 
ber of  the  militant  party,  Hananiah  by  name, 
seized  and  broke  the  wooden  yoke.  "Then 
the  word  of  Yahweh  came  to  Jeremiah  say- 
ing, go  tell  Hananiah  who  has  broken  the  bars 
of  wood  that  thou  wilt  make  in  their  stead 
bars  of  iron"  (Jer.  xxviii.  12).  And  history 
promptly  vindicated  his  forecast  by  prolonging 
the  captivity  for  fifty  years.  But  opposition 
to  Jeremiah's  ministry  came,  not  only  from 
the  rebel  element  in  the  community,  but  also 
from  the  flourishing  pseudo-prophetic  party, 
of  whom  he  complained  that  they  rocked  the 
people  in  a  false  security  (vi.  14),  that  in- 
stead of  warning  the  nation,  they  confirmed 
it  in  its  sin  (xxiii.  17).  Smooth  talkers 
they  were  who,  to  gain  popularity  and  pros- 
perity, sought  to  assure  the  people  that  no 
real  harm  would  come  to  them.  Peace,  they 
predicted,  would  prevail,  adding  that  even  if 
war  were  to  come,  Egypt  could  be  relied  on 
for  efficient  help.  They  advocated  a  kind  of 
primitive  Monroe  Doctrine  according  to  which 

174 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

the  armies  of  Pharaoh  could  be  counted  on  in 
an  emergency.  But  when  the  crisis  came, 
Pharaoh  had  pressing  business  of  his  own  to 
attend  to.  Had  there  been  newspapers  in 
Jeremiah's  time,  he  would  have  written  edi- 
torials on  the  political  situation  and  the  duty 
of  patriots.  As  it  was,  he  put  a  yoke  round 
his  neck  and  taking  his  stand  by  the  temple 
gate  advised  acquiescence  in  the  captivity 
which  Yahweh  had  preordained  as  the  instru- 
ment to  bring  the  nation  to  righteousness. 
His  advice  was  not  taken,  but  the  city  was. 
Surely  if  ever  a  man  fell  on  evil  times,  it  was 
Jeremiah,  for  he  had  to  face  the  severest 
ordeal  that  a  patriot  and  prophet  could  be 
called  to  endure.  He  had  to  stand  by  and 
see  his  country  invaded  by  a  foreign  foe,  his 
beloved  Jerusalem  sacked,  burned  and  laid 
waste.  He  did  all  in  his  power  to  stem  the 
tide  of  national  decline  and  for  a  reward  he 
was  pilloried  in  the  public  square,  lowered 
into  a  muddy  cistern,  dungeoned  in  prison. 
During  the  terrible  siege  of  Jerusalem,  that 
was  to  end  in  the  destruction  of  the  Jewish 

175 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

state,  Jeremiah  bought  a  field  in  the  heart  of 
the  town  and  executed  the  deed  of  contract 
to  demonstrate  his  faith  that  Judah  would 
be  restored  and  a  glorious  future  await  the 
people  of  Yahweh.  While  in  prison  he  dic- 
tated to  his  secretary,  Baruch,  the  sermons 
he  had  preached  in  the  course  of  his  twenty- 
two  years'  ministry,  bidding  him  read  them 
aloud  in  the  temple  on  the  next  fast-day. 
Word  of  this  plan  reached  the  ears  of  the 
priests  and  they  promptly  notified  the  nobles, 
who,  in  turn,  apprised  the  king.  He  was 
sitting  in  his  winter  palace  before  the  open 
fireplace  when  the  manuscript,  which  he  had 
ordered  to  be  brought  to  him,  was  read. 
Calling  for  a  knife  he  cut  the  scrolls  into  strips 
and  threw  them  into  the  fire.  Thus  did  his- 
tory repeat  itself.  How  often  have  ecclesi- 
astical and  political  despots  tried  to  crush 
free  thought  and  free  speech  by  burning  the 
books  and  the  bodies  of  the  authors,  whose 
convictions  were  brighter  than  flames  and, 
like  asbestos,  withstood  the  fire  that  was 
meant   to    consume   them !     Nay    more,    the 

176 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

ashes  of  the  books  and  of  the  writers  have 
proved  powerful  fertiUzers  of  repudiated  truth. 
Jeremiah  rewrote  the  sermons  and  we  are 
told  that  "he  added  much  more  besides," 
only,  however,  to  be  banished  to  Egypt,  that 
treacherous  land  against  which  he  had  warned 
his  fellow-countrymen  in  vain.  There,  after 
more  than  forty  years  of  consecrated  service, 
he  died  a  martyr's  death,  stoned  by  the 
people  for  whose  kinsmen  he  had  labored  so 
devotedly  and  so  long.  Surely  to  him  we 
may  fittingly  apply  those  noble  lines  of  the 
last  verse  of  the  last  poem  from  Browning's 
pen,  for  Jeremiah  also  was 

"  One  who  never  turned  his  back. 
But  marched  breast  forward, 
Never  doubted  clouds  would  break ; 
Never  dreamed  though  right  were  worsted. 

Wrong  would  triumph ; 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better; 
Sleep  to  wake." 

The  prophets  of  the  exile  in  Babylon  were 
Ezekiel  and  the  second  Isaiah.     Though  pri- 
marily a  priest,  deeply  concerned  about  the 
ritual    (for    in    Babylon    there    was    neither 
N  177 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

Jewish  temple  nor  sacrifice),  Ezekiel  fulfilled 
the  part  of  prophet,  witness  those  chapters  of 
his  book  in  which  he  arraigns  foreign  nations 
and  comforts  his  fellow-countrymen  with  the 
conviction  that  the  captivity  was  designed 
by  Yahweh  to  purify  his  people  and  prepare 
them  for  blessings  yet  to  be.^  Ezekiel  antici- 
pated, not  only  the  restoration  of  the  people 
to  Canaan,  to  be  ruled  over  by  a  king  of 
David's  line,  as  of  old,  but  also  the  rebuilding 
of  the  temple  and  on  a  more  magnificent 
scale  than  before.  In  the  light  of  this  expec- 
tation he  drew  up  a  constitution,  or  religious 
code,  for  the  new  era.  It  was  drafted  in  the 
form  of  a  vision,  replete  with  imagery  that 
suggests  the  influence  of  Babylonian  beliefs 
upon  the  prophet's  own  thought.^  But  when 
the  people  returned  to  Jerusalem,  they  were 
altogether  too  poor  to  execute  Ezekiel's  ex- 
tensive and  magnificent  plans. 

Toward  the  close  of  the  Babylonian  exile, 
Persia  had  grown  so  powerful  that  to  the 
statesmen-prophets   it  seemed  probable  that 

'  Ezek.  xxv-xxxii,  xxxvii.  *  Ibid,  xl-xlviii. 

178 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

release  from  captivity  would  soon  be  obtained. 
With  the  Persian  conquest  of  Babylonia  their 
expectation  was  fulfilled.  Chief  among  He- 
brew leaders  at  the  close  of  the  exilian  era 
was  the  second  Isaiah.  He  has  been  so 
named  to  distinguish  him  from  the  earlier 
Isaiah  of  Hezekiah's  time,  to  whose  writings 
those  of  this  prophet  were  somehow  appended, 
perhaps  because  his  name  also  was  Isaiah. 
Certain  at  least  it  is,  in  the  light  of  internal 
evidence,  that  the  last  twenty-six  chapters  of 
the  book  of  Isaiah  belong  to  a  period  two 
centuries  or  more  removed  from  those  earlier 
chapters  that  are  identified  with  the  first 
Isaiah.  Our  interest  in  the  exilian  Isaiah 
centres  upon  his  poetic,  deeply  religious  inter- 
pretation of  "the  righteous  remnant"  of  the 
nation  in  Babylon,  atoning  by  their  suffering 
for  the  sins  of  all  the  rest.  Nowhere  in  He- 
brew literature  is  there  a  loftier  description 
of  innocent  souls  suffering  and  atoning  for 
the  sins  of  others  than  in  the  passage  from 
the  book  of  Isaiah  which  extends  from  the 
thirteenth  verse  of  the  fifty -second  chapter  to 

179 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

the  end  of  the  fifty-third.  Here  the  spiritual 
kernel  of  the  nation  is  personified  under  the 
title  of  "the  suffering  servant  of  Yahweh," 
undergoing  all  manner  of  aflfliction  for  the 
sake  of  the  unrighteous  multitude.  No  won- 
der this  passage  came  to  be  applied  to  Jesus 
and  to  be  construed  as  a  prediction  of  his 
advent,  albeit  that  the  context  clearly  shows 
that  the  author  had  only  his  own  contem- 
poraries in  mind,  the  personified  "righteous 
remnant"  of  the  nation.  Very  significant  is 
the  language  in  which  the  second  Isaiah 
described  the  great  Persian  King,  Cyrus.  He 
refers  to  him  as  "Yahweh's  shepherd,"  as 
"the  Anointed  One,"  the  "righteous."  ^ 
Under  his  regime  it  was  that  the  exilian  hope 
of  restoration  to  Canaan  was  fulfilled.  In 
535  B.C.  Cyrus  gave  permission  to  the  cap- 
tives in  Babylon  to  return  to  Jerusalem  and 
a  goodly  portion  of  the  people  availed  them- 
selves of  the  privilege.  Foremost  among  the 
prophets  of  the  return  were  Haggai  and  Zech- 
ariah.^     They  exhort  the  people  to  rebuild  the 

1  xli.  2 ;   xlv.  1-4.  2  The  author  of  i-viii. 

180 


THE    PROPHETS    OF   ISRAEL 

temple,  live  in  righteousness  and  hope  for  the 
blessing  of  their  God. 

With  the  rebuilding  of  the  temple  the 
priests  were  once  more  in  the  ascendant,  and 
their  importance  was  considerably  accen- 
tuated by  the  fact  that  political  independence 
had  long  been  a  thing  of  the  past,  so  that 
interest  came  to  be  increasingly  focussed  upon 
the  national  religion.  Add  to  this  the  steady 
growth  of  Pentateuchal  legislation,  designed 
as  it  was  to  keep  the  nation  loyal  to  Yahweh 
and  also  distinct  from  the  surrounding  peoples, 
and  we  have  a  further  reason  for  the  increasing 
dominance  of  the  priesthood.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  in  the  fifth  and  fourth  centuries 
prophec}^  should  have  declined,  Malachi,  Joel 
and  the  later  Zechariah^  prophesj^ing,  indeed, 
yet  showing  unmistakable  signs  of  the  change 
that  was  taking  place  in  the  religious  organi- 
zation and  life  of  the  people.  In  other  words, 
with  the  development  of  the  religious  "Law" 
and  the  concomitant  rise  of  its  guardians  to 
the  highest  place  in  the  nation's  esteem,  the 

^  Zech.  ix-xi,  xii-xiv. 
181 


GREAT   RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

written  Word  took  the  place  of  the  immediate 
revelation  of  Yahweh  to  his  servants,  the 
prophets. 

Early  in  the  history  of  the  Christian 
church,  it  was  proposed  to  withdraw  the 
Old  Testament  from  the  canon  of  Christian 
scriptures  and  make  it  consist  of  the  New 
Testament  alone,  but  the  proposition  failed 
to  carry  and  deservedly  so.  For  it  would 
have  robbed  the  Christian  scriptures  of  that 
ethical  message  of  the  great  moral  leaders  in 
Israel,  which  takes  rank  among  the  supreme 
and  permanent  spiritual  assets  of  the  race. 
In  the  hearts  of  Israel's  prophets  the  sense 
of  duty  burned  with  an  unsurpassed  intensity 
and  glow.  And  this,  as  Professor  Adler  has 
recently  observed,  "explains  their  capacity 
for  moral  indignation,  the  august  authority 
with  which  they  speak,  as  though  the  Moral 
Law  were  uttering  itself  through  them.'* 
It  explains  also  the  precision  with  which  they 
point  to  the  root-sin  of  the  nation,  the  light- 
ning stroke  with  which  they  smite  the 
guilty  soul  and  the  soothing  balm  of  comfort 

182 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

they  instil  into  doubting  and  despondent 
hearts. 

Not  only  did  there  burn  within  the  pro- 
phets the  sense  of  duty,  but  there  also  shone 
the  star  of  hope,  even  in  the  darkest  days  of 
national  corruption  and  dissolution.  Nor  is 
there  anything  more  wonderful  and  inspiring 
than  the  undying  faith  of  these  great  moral 
leaders  in  the  coming  of  a  day  of  better 
things,  a  faith  which  took  on  increasing 
definiteness  and  concreteness  with  the  years, 
culminating  in  the  conception  of  a  Messianic 
Kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  a  Commonwealth 
of  Man,  a  City  of  the  Light,  "from  whose 
borders  wrong  is  banished,  where  justice 
reigns  supreme  o'er  all,  and  only  righteous 
men  and  women  dwell."  Despite  all  the 
sufferings  of  chastisement  for  idolatry  and 
sin,  never  did  the  patriotic  hope  die  out  that 
Yahweh  would  redeem  his  chosen  people  and 
reestablish  them  in  their  former  home. 

Other  nations,  notably  the  Persians,  have 
shown  themselves  capable  of  patriotic  effort 
for  freedom  and  resistance  to  foreign  pressure 

183 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

through   centuries    of   subjugation.     But   the 
Jewish  patriotism  is  unhke  them  all  because 
it  was  quickened  and  organized  by  religious 
feeling,  by  the  mighty  conception  of  a  cove- 
nant according  to  which  Yahweh  had  chosen 
Israel    from    among    all    the    nations    of    the 
earth  and  had  promised  his  blessing  forever 
on    conditions    that    they    prove    loyal    and 
obedient.     In  the  light  of  that  covenant  each 
new    subjugation    in    turn    was    interpreted, 
chastisement  being  but  the  intended  prepara- 
tion for  a  glorious  future.     Assyria,   Egypt, 
Babvlon,  Persia,  Greece,  Rome,  each  in  turn 
held  the  Hebrews  in  subjection,  yet  never  did 
they  lose  their  grip  on  the  belief  that  all  the 
nations  of  the  earth  would  come  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  Yahweh  and  His  Law  and  so  share  the 
Kingdom  He  would  prepare  for  His  chosen  ones. 
Even    Amos,    whose    prophecy    is    preemi- 
nently   pessimistic,    has    a    vision    of    Israel, 
sifted   as   is   corn   in   a   sieve,    and   Yahweh 
suffering   not   a   single   grain   to   fall   to   the 
earth. ^     Hosea    sees    the    branches    of    Israel 

'  Amos  ix.  9. 
184 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

spread  their  beauty  like  those  of  the  olive 
tree  and  all  who  dwell  under  their  shadow 
rejoicing  in  the  ways  of  the  Lord.^  Isaiah, 
living  in  the  thick  of  the  Assyrian  invasion, 
draws  a  dark  picture  of  what  must  follow  the 
corruption  of  Israel,  but  beyond  the  gloom  he 
descries  the  outline  of  a  regenerated  nation 
ruled  by  a  blameless  King  in  righteousness 
and  in  peace.^  Jeremiah,  though  chastise- 
ment is  his  dominant  thought,  never  believed 
in  the  ruin  of  his  people.  Rather  did  he  see 
in  Nebuchadrezzar  the  instrument  whereby 
Yahweh  accomplished  his  beneficent  punish- 
ment of  a  recalcitrant  people.  Into  captivity 
must  they  go  but  only  to  be  in  due  time 
restored  to  their  own  land  and  live  pros- 
perously under  one  of  their  own  princes  and 
with  a  new  covenant,  Yahweh  writing  His 
Law  into  their  hearts.^  The  exilian  Isaiah 
carries  the  prophetic  optimism  further  still, 
idealizing  Israel  herself  into  a  divinely  ap- 
pointed instrument  for  the  enlightening  and 

»  Hosea  xiv.  6.  ^  Is.  xi.  1-9. 

3  Jer.  xxxi.  31-34. 

185 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

healing  of  the  nations.  They  shall  see  Jeru- 
salem the  capital  of  a  heaven  on  earth  in 
which  all  the  world  will  be  blessed.^  Joel 
and  the  third  Zechariah,  living  in  the  period 
of  the  Greek  rule,  echo  the  exalted  strain, 
while  the  author  of  the  ninth  chapter  of  Isaiah, 
the  contemporary  of  these  prophets,  enlarges 
upon  the  vision  still  more,  telling  of  the 
Davidic  King  whose  dynasty  shall  last  for- 
ever and  who  shall  be  called  "Immanuel, 
Wonderful,  Counsellor,  Prince  of  Peace." 
And  when  prophecy  had  died  out  in  Israel 
and  given  place  to  priestly  and  scribal  au- 
thorities, the  ancient  patriotic  hope  still  con- 
tinued to  glow,  witness  the  Apocalyptic  lit- 
erature, the  books  of  the  "Apocrypha"  and 
of  the  "Pseudepigrapha,"  notably  the  "Psal- 
ters of  Solomon"  in  which  the  term  "Mes- 
siah" is  applied  to  the  Davidic  King,  coming 
in  glory  to  establish  the  Kingdom  of  God  on 
earth.  Thence  we  pass  to  the  still  later  por- 
traitures of  the  New  Testament  books,  in  the 
latest  of  which,  written  in  the  middle  of  the 

'  Is.  Ixvi.  20-22. 
186 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

second  century  of  our  era,  we  read  the  pathetic 
query,  "Where  is  the  promise  of  his  coming,  for 
since  the  fathers  fell  asleep  all  things  remain 
as  they  were  from  the  beginning."  ^ 

From  that  day  to  this  the  heavens  have 
remained  silent ;  the  old  order  of  the  world  has 
gone  on  as  of  yore  and  Israel's  hope,  born  in 
the  days  of  Amos  and  developed  throughout 
the  succeeding  seven  centuries  into  a  mighty 
"Messianic"  expectation,  remains  void  of 
fulfilment. 

Was  it,  then,  an  empty,  baseless  dream  ? 
Nay,  rather  was  it  the  expression  of  that  death- 
less hope  in  the  human  heart  that  truth  will 
prevail  and  justice  be  victorious.  Such,  at 
least,  was  the  essence,  the  soul  of  that  age- 
long Hebrew  hope.  Nor  is  there  any  other 
factor  in  social  progress  so  indispensable  as 
this  very  expectancy.  "Unless  your  soul 
dwells  in  Utopia,"  said  President  Jordan,  "life 
is  not  worth  the  keeping."  What,  under 
heaven,  is  there  to  sustain  us  in  our  work  for 
social  reform  except  the  spell  exercised  upon  us 

»  2  Pet.  iii.  4. 
187 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

by  the  vision  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Man,  the 
expectation  of  triumphant  justice  and  broth- 
erhood as  a  normal  occurrence  that  must  some 
day  come  to  pass  ?  What  thought,  I  ask,  is 
uppermost  in  our  minds  ?  Ah,  there  is  only 
one  thought  worthy  to  be  treasured  there,  the 
thought  that  was  cherished  by  the  prophets 
of  Israel,  the  thought  of  never  dying  realities 
to  which  we  are  allied,  the  thought  of  a  soul  in 
man  impelled  by  a  mighty  urge  to  ends  of 
infinite  worth,  the  thought  that  we  are  less 
than  the  lower  orders  of  animal  life  if  we  be  not 
moved  with  an  unceasing  purpose  to  fit  our- 
selves for  supernal  things.  Strip  the  ancient 
Hebrew  hope  of  its  local,  transient  element,  and 
what  remains  is  an  everlasting  source  of  in- 
spiration for  America  and  for  the  world.  'Tis 
the  thought  of  an  ideal  social  order  yet  to  be, 
in  which  no  one  will  treat  another  as  merely  a 
means  to  his  ends,  but  also  as  an  end  in  him- 
self; in  which  life,  liberty,  the  pursuit  of 
happiness,  culture,  will  be  a  possibility  for  all 
instead  of  for  only  the  few ;  in  which  all  men 
and  women  shall  attain,  not  as  serfs,  but  as 

188 


THE    PROPHETS    OF    ISRAEL 

free  intelligent  agents,  through  the  willing 
cooperation  of  each  with  all,  the  things  that 
are  most  worth  while.  Such  is  the  permanent 
in  the  transient  Messianic  hope  of  ancient 
Israel.  It  warrants  the  statement,  that  as  long 
as  man  lives  on  this  planet,  they  who  wish  to 
make  progress  in  the  upper  zones  of  their  being 
must  turn  to  Israel  for  inspiration,  to  those 
prophets  of  the  Old  Testament  who  saw  in 
righteousness  the  very  core  of  religion  and  who 
held  with  unceasing  and  unflagging  zeal  the 
mighty  expectation  of  a  coming  Commonwealth 
of  Man. 


189 


VI 
JESUS 


VI 
JESUS 

TN  this  series  of  lectures  on  great  moral 
leaders  of  the  Orient  we  have  consulted 
only  first-hand  sources  of  information.  What, 
then,  is  the  fountain-source  of  our  knowledge 
concerning  Jesus  ?  Unlike  Confucius  and  Mo- 
hammed, Jesus  wrote  nothing.  His  immediate 
disciples,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Mat- 
thew, wrote  nothing.  The  members  of  the 
first  Christian  Church  at  Jerusalem  wrote 
nothing,  being  illiterate,  poor  and  preoccu- 
pied with  the  practical  needs  of  the  com- 
munity.^ The  earliest  writings  in  the  New 
Testament  are  letters  ascribed  to  the  apostle 
Paul.  According  to  his  own  testimony,  he 
never  saw  Jesus  except  in  a  vision  and  these 
letters,  written  twenty -five  years  after  the 
death  of  Jesus,  furnish  no  information  con- 

1 1  Cor.  i.  6. 
o  193 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

cerning  his  life.  They  begin  with  his  death 
and  resurrection  and  the  theory  of  salvation 
built  thereon.  "Acts,"  *' Revelation,"  the 
non-Pauline  epistles,  no  one  of  these  throws 
any  light  on  the  life  of  Jesus.  The  "fourth 
gospel"  has  theological  and  ethical  rather  than 
historical  and  biographical  value. ^  Thus  we  are 
restricted  to  the  first  three  gospels,  the  so-called 
"Synoptics,"  since  they  "look  together," 
from  a  common  standpoint,  at  Jesus'  life. 
Comparing  them,  we  find  that  despite  their 
various  points  of  difference,  they  present  a 
story  of  the  life  of  Jesus  on  which  all  three  agree, 
and  which  the  late  Prof.  E.  A.  Abbott  of 
London  has  entitled  "the  triple  tradition." 
Turning  to  this  harmony  of  the  Synoptics, 
we  note  how  little  there  is  on  which  all  three 
agree  compared  to  their  total  content.  It 
reminds  us  of  the  "Gathas,"  where  we  ob- 
served how  little  authentic  information  there 
is  concerning  Zoroaster.  Excepting  only  him, 
less  is  known  of  Jesus  than  of  any  other  of  the 
great  moral  leaders  of  the  Orient.     We  do  not 

iJohni.  1-18;  xx.  81, 
194 


JESUS 

know  the  year,  month,  day,  or  place  of  his 
birth.  December  25  is  only  the  guess  of  the 
early  Christian  missionaries  at  the  time  they 
were  converting  the  Roman  Empire  to  Chris- 
tianity. Bethlehem  as  the  birthplace  of  Jesus 
was  only  a  "Messianic"  guess  on  the  part  of 
the  authors  of  the  first  and  third  gospels. 
Still,  meagre  as  are  the  details  of  Jesus'  life 
recorded  in  the  triple  tradition,  dense  as  is  our 
ignorance  concerning  eighteen  of  his  thirty 
years  on  earth,  silent  as  are  the  Synoptics 
on  many  points  about  which  we  long  to  be 
informed,  obvious  and  numerous  as  are  the 
defects  of  the  record  itself,  the  personality 
of  Jesus  stands  forth  in  clear  and  definite 
outline.  The  notion  that  he  never  existed 
at  all,  —  first  entertained  by  the  "Docetists" 
in  the  second  century  and  recently  revived,  on 
other  grounds,  by  native  and  foreign  schol- 
ars, —  is  not  to  be  accepted  merely  because 
of  the  disappointment  engendered  by  read- 
ing the  record.  In  that  case  we  should  be 
obliged  to  discredit  the  existence  of  Julius 
Caesar  or  Hannibal.     Nor,  again,  will  it  do  to 

195 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

deny  the  historicity  of  Jesus  on  the  ground  that 
the  chief  classical  writers  of  the  first  century 
make  only  passing  allusion  to  him.  For  it 
must  be  remembered  that  Jesus  was  born  in  a 
remote,  insignificant,  despised  province  of  the 
Roman  empire  and  was  therefore  regarded 
by  the  authorities  at  Rome  as  an  obscure  up- 
start, a  creator  of  sedition,  a  Galilean  peasant, 
reproducing  a  familiar  local  sensation.  Had 
Jesus  been  born  at  Rome,  or  Alexandria,  or 
some  other  important  centre  of  the  empire, 
and  there  fulfilled  his  mission,  we  would  have 
reason  to  expect  fuller  details  from  the  Roman 
historians  of  his  time.  But  even  as  it  is,  we 
have  the  testimony  of  Tacitus,  whom  Gibbon 
and  Froude  have  praised  as  an  authority  of  the 
first  rank  and  whose  evidence  is  not  to  be 
esteemed  a  "forgery  of  Bracciolini,"  as  certain 
shallow  radicals  have  sought  to  show.  The 
passage  is  to  be  found  in  the  fifteenth  book  of 
the  "Annals"  and  every  impartial  reader  will 
feel  from  the  context  and  form,  despite  the 
brevity  of  the  passage,  its  genuineness. 
"Christ,  from  whom  the   Christian  sect  de- 

196 


JESUS 

rived  its  name,  had  been  put  to  death  in  the 
reign  of  Tiberius  by  the  procurator,  Pontius 
Pilate."     Thus    the    argument    for    the    non- 
existence  of   Jesus,  based  on  the   scanty  in- 
formation furnished  by  the  earhest  Christian 
sources,    and   on   the   incidental,    brief   refer- 
ences to  Jesus  in  contemporary  classical  litera- 
ture, breaks  down.     And  the  same  may  be  said, 
I  think,  of  the  other  current  arguments  de- 
signed  to   disprove  the  historicity   of   Jesus. 
Looking  at  the  subject  from  a  positive  stand- 
point, the  belief  that  Jesus  did  exist  is  grounded, 
not  only  on  the  testimony  we  have  just  con- 
sidered, but   also   on   the   portraiture  of   the 
Messianic  function  as  attributed  to  Jesus  in 
the  Synoptics,  so  radically  different  from  the 
popular  Jewish  conception  of  the  office  as  to 
be  absolutely  inexplicable  there,  had  not  some 
one  actually  impersonated  the  part.     Further- 
more, the  many  legends  woven  about  his  per- 
sonality prove,  as  does  nothing  else,  not  only 
his  existence,  but  his  spiritual  greatness.     For 
such  stories  as  are  related  of  him  did  not  origi- 
nate until  one  equal  to  generating  such  ideas 

197 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

had  lived.  Legends  always  adorn,  they  do 
not  create  personalities.  They  are  the  vines 
of  grateful  reverence  and  appreciation  that 
twine  about  the  tree  of  soul-greatness.  Weems 
did  not  start  with  a  hatchet  story  and  other 
legends  and  then  attach  them  to  a  Washing- 
ton. Nor  is  the  Lincoln  myth,  now  in  process 
of  formation,  independent  of  the  historical 
emancipator  of  the  slaves.  Still  more  strongly 
is  the  historicity  of  Jesus  attested  by  the  reason 
for  the  conversion  of  Constantine  and  for  the 
triumph  of  Christianity  over  the  most  power- 
ful of  its  early  rivals,  Mithraism.  The  reason 
was  that  the  Christians  could  point  to  an 
actual  human  being  as  their  pattern  and  ideal, 
and  no  follower  of  Mithraism  denied  it; 
whereas  the  Mithraists  had  for  their  supreme 
object  of  veneration  only  an  abstraction,  a 
beautiful,  ennobling  personification  of  light; 
but,  after  all,  only  an  ethereal  abstraction. 
For  this  reason,  above  all  else,  did  Christian- 
ity win  the  battle  of  the  sects  for  control  of  the 
Roman  empire.  And  Constantine  was  saga- 
cious enough  to  see  the  superiority  of  a  religion 

198 


JESUS 

with  a  human  founder  and  guide  to  one  whose 
leader  was  only  a  product  of  the  imagination  of 
his  worshippers. 

Of  the  physical  appearance  of  Jesus  we  know 
absolutely  nothing.  No  authentic  portrait 
has  come  down  to  us.  We  search  the  litera- 
ture of  the  first  century  in  vain  for  some  allu- 
sion to  the  subject.  Yet  why  should  any  refer- 
ence have  been  made  to  the  personal  appear- 
ance of  Jesus  ?  Did  not  his  Jewish  contem- 
poraries in  Palestine  expect  his  return  to  earth 
before  their  own  generation  had  passed  away  ? 
Had  he  not  said  he  would  return  ?  Why,  then, 
should  there  be  any  thought  of  describing  his 
appearance  or  even  of  recording  what  he  had 
said  and  done  ?  Popular  expectancy  was  such 
as  to  preclude  concern  for  a  biography  of  Jesus 
and  only  when  hope  waned  and  disappoint- 
ment over  the  delay  in  his  coming  grew  intense, 
did  the  serious  work  of  recollecting,  writing 
and  transmitting  begin.  The  earliest  refer- 
ence to  the  physical  appearance  of  Jesus  is 
found  in  the  works  of  Justin,  the  martyr, 
written  about  the  middle  of  the  second  century. 

199 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

Jesus,  he  said,  looked  just  as  the  Scriptures 
said  he  would  look,  quoting  the  fifty-third 
chapter  of  Isaiah,  where  it  is  written,  "He  hath 
no  form  nor  comeliness,  and  when  we  see  him 
there  is  no  beauty  that  we  should  desire  him.'* 
Thus,  reading  into  this  passage,  a  description 
of  Jesus'  appearance,  Justin  concluded  he  was 
not  externally  attractive.  In  the  absence  of  re- 
liable information  we  are,  as  Renan  remarked, 
"at  liberty  to  think  as  we  please."  This,  in- 
deed, is  what  all  painters  and  sculptors  through- 
out the  Christian  centuries  have  done.  And  of 
all  historic  representations  of  Jesus,  perhaps 
that  of  Leonardo,  —  the  central  figure  of  his 
"Last  Supper,"  —  satisfied  and  stood  su- 
preme, because  of  its  marvellous  rendering  of 
the  distinctive  qualities  of  Jesus'  character. 

Socially,  Jesus  was  not  at  all  the  ascetic 
that  medisevalism  and  its  modern  representa- 
tives would  have  us  believe.  Though  he  had 
much  in  common  with  the  Essenes,  there  is  no 
evidence  to  indicate  that  he  was  of  their 
number,  nor  have  we  any  reason  to  think  he 
was  the  precursor  of  Puritan  abstinences  and 

200 


JESUS. 


JESUS 

prohibitions.  On  the  contrary,  the  Synop- 
tics impress  us  with  a  pronounced  sense  of  the 
humanity  of  Jesus,  of  the  blood  in  his  veins 
running  ruddy  and  warm,  of  his  wit  and  humor, 
his  responsiveness  to  every  experience  that 
would  make  a  strong  human  appeal.  We  have 
the  stories  of  his  dining  with  distinguished  per- 
sons and  the  criticism  his  acceptance  of  their 
invitations  provoked.  We  have  the  parables, 
with  their  sensitiveness  to  beauty  and  joy  and 
love.  Add  to  these  the  tender  verses  that 
relate  his  taking  little  children  in  his  arms  and 
blessing  them  and  the  story  of  the  wedding- 
feast  at  Cana  which,  though  peculiar  to  the 
fourth  gospel,  may  be  rooted  in  a  genuine 
tradition  that  escaped  the  attention  of  the 
Synoptists. 

Intellectually,  Jesus  was  a  free  thinker,  free 
from  the  trammels  of  tradition,  free  to  follow 
his  own  independent  thought.  At  every  crisis 
in  his  life  he  proved  himself  a  sceptic  in  the 
true  and  noble  sense  of  that  word.  Accord- 
ing to  its  derivation,  the  word  sceptic  means 
one  who  shades  his  eyes  to  look  steadfastly 

201 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

at  an  object.  The  sceptic  is  one  who  shades 
his  eyes  from  prejudice,  predilection,  bias, 
from  everything  calculated  to  prevent  his 
looking  steadfastly  for  the  truth,  eager  above 
all  else  not  to  be  deceived  or  misled  in  his 
search  for  truth.  Hence,  consecrated  doubt 
was  a  characteristic  of  Jesus'  thought;  the 
doubt  that  puts  things  to  the  proof  and  so 
strengthens  faith.  At  the  age  of  twelve  it 
was  doubt  that  drew  him  to  the  temple  to  seek 
solutions  for  vexing  question  from  the  doctors 
of  the  law.  When  he  was  twenty-eight  or 
twenty-nine,  it  was  doubt  that  drove  him  into 
the  wilderness,  there  to  settle  the  open  ques- 
tion concerning  his  choice  of  a  Messianic 
career.  A  little  later,  it  was  doubt  that  led 
him  into  the  garden  and  the  cold  midnight  air, 
the  agony  of  Gethsemane  culminating  in  con- 
quered doubt.  And  when,  at  last,  he  came  to 
the  cross,  there  every  wound  pleaded  with 
silent  eloquence  that  men  should  be  sincere, 
consecrated,  loyal  to  their  inmost  convictions 
even  though  their  only  reward  be  a  crown  of 
thorns,    their    only  sympathy    the    powerless 

202 


JESUS 

tears  of  friends,  their  deathbed  a  cross.  To 
estimate  in  any  adequate  degree  a  truly  great 
personaHty  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  tasks. 
Indeed  it  defies  achievement,  the  very  great- 
ness of  the  personality  forbidding  analysis 
and  exhaustive  explanation.  This  much,  how- 
ever, may  be  said  of  such  an  one,  viz.  that  he 
owes  his  greatness,  not  so  much  to  the  posses- 
sion of  any  attributes  that  differentiate  him 
from  others,  as  to  his  own  sublime  embodiment 
of  qualities  that  are  universal.  Sincerity, 
sympathy,  consecration,  trust;  these  are  at- 
tributes of  character  known  in  every  age  and 
in  every  land.  And  the  essential  greatness 
of  Jesus  consists  in  his  particular  manifesta- 
tion of  these  universal  qualities.  Differ  as 
men  do  in  their  theories  of  the  person  of  Jesus, 
all  unite  in  their  recognition  of  these  cardinal 
attributes  of  his  character ;  all  are  agreed  that 
Jesus  will  be  forever  remembered,  reverenced 
and  loved  for  his  unswerving  loyalty  to  his 
convictions,  his  unsurpassed  sympathy  for 
men,  his  unalloyed  consecration  to  a  great 
life-purpose,   his    undying   trust   in   a   Power 

203 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

higher  than  man.  The  time  limit  prescribed 
for  this  lecture  forbids  my  dwelling  at  length 
upon  these  qualities.  I  must  be  content 
merely  to  touch  upon  them  and  reserve  for 
another  season  what  must  be  omitted  now. 

1.  The  crowning  attribute  in  the  character 
of  Jesus  was  his  loyalty  to  conviction,  his 
white-mindedness,  his  spiritual  integrity.  His 
soul  was  on  fire  with  mighty  convictions  and 
he  held  to  them  with  an  adamantine  inflexi- 
bility. He  believed  that  soon  the  existing 
order  of  humanity  would  pass  away  and  be 
replaced  by  a  new  and  higher  type,  "the  King- 
dom of  Heaven,"  a  society  in  which  justice 
and  love  would  be  the  sole  ruling  principles  of 
conduct;  prosperity,  peace  and  joy  be  the 
possession  of  all  who  dwell  therein.  Despite 
all  the  oppression,  cruelty,  despotism  of  his 
day,  despite  all  the  unpromising  political  and 
social  conditions  of  his  time,  Jesus  dared  to 
entertain  the  magnificent  dream  of  a  renovated 
world.  He  believed  that  morality  is  progres- 
sive, that  the  ethical  code  of  one  age  is  not 
necessarily  sufficient  for  the  needs  of  the  next. 

204 


JESUS 

Strong  and  deep  as  was  his  reverence  for  the 
Sinai  Commandments  he  yet  felt  that  they 
did  not  exhaust  the  possibihties  of  the  human 
spirit.  He  respected  the  authority  of  Moses, 
but  he  did  not  regard  it  as  final.  If  we  would 
be  like  Jesus,  then,  like  him,  we  must  be  true 
to  truth  and  dare,  if  need  be,  to  differ  from  him 
as  he  dared  to  differ  from  Moses.  Rather 
than  be  false  to  his  convictions  and  betray  his 
soul,  he  preferred  persecution,  ignominy,  death. 
The  luxury  of  his  convictions  was  more  pre- 
cious to  him  than  the  luxury  of  existence. 
Life  to  him  meant  an  untrammelled  mind,  an 
unpolluted  conscience,  an  unsullied  soul.  And 
in  these  days  of  intellectual  dishonesties,  prac- 
tised to  a  deplorable  extent  by  clergy  and 
laity  alike,  how  tremendous  is  the  need  of 
turning  again  to  this  crowning  grace  in  the 
character  of  Jesus  and  drawing  inspiration 
from  the  contemplation  of  it.  While  he  was 
still  on  earth  there  were  those  to  whom  Jesus 
said,  "Why  call  ye  me  Lord,  Lord,  and  do  not 
the  things  which  I  say?"  And  this  class  has 
never  been  left  without  a  witness  in  any  age. 

205 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

2.  To  understand  his  unsurpassed  sym- 
pathy for  man  we  have  only  to  recall  the  age 
in  which  it  appeared.  An  age  of  cruelty, 
tyranny,  oppression;  an  age  in  which  prov- 
inces were  sacked  to  pay  the  cost  of  gorgeous 
ceremonies  and  processions  of  royalty,  an  age 
in  which  the  wealth  of  colonies  was  drained 
to  furnish  sumptuous  feasts  for  selfish  states- 
men, an  age  in  which  brotherhood  was  a 
synonym  for  clique  or  class.  In  such  an  age 
Jesus  revived  the  ancient  protest  of  humanity, 
summing  up  his  solution  of  the  social  problem 
in  terms  of  sympathy.  Love  was  to  be  the 
solvent  in  which  all  hatreds  and  jealousies 
would  melt  away.  The  redeeming  power  of  a 
great  spiritual  love,  —  that  was  the  gospel 
he  brought  to  his  age  and  to  our  age,  too ;  for 
we  know  that  if  we  are  fine  enough,  and  have 
enough  of  the  heart  culture  that  was  in  Jesus, 
if  our  love  is  strong  enough,  deep  enough,  wise 
enough,  patient  enough,  then  no  human  soul, 
however  degraded,  can  be  beyond  the  reach 
of  our  redeeming  love.  Truly  does  the  sym- 
pathy that  was  in  Jesus  flood  the  gospel  story 

206 


JESUS 

as  the  waters  of  the  sea  flood  its  basin  and  shore. 
His  love  went  out  hopefull3%  confidently,  help- 
fully to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  even 
to  the  very  lowest,  because  he  believed  that 
the  essential  worth  of  each  human  being  lies 
only  and  always  in  his  potentialities,  in  that 
image  of  the  divine  in  which  he  was  potentially 
made.  Even  in  the  abyss  of  shame  and 
wretchedness  of  the  erring  woman,  he  held  that 
there  lies  a  hidden  power  of  salvation,  a  pos- 
sibility of  rebirth  into  the  moral  life.  Jesus 
by  his  gentleness  denied  the  existence  of  hope- 
less castaways.  To  him  who  prided  himself 
on  his  righteousness  Jesus  opposed  the  sinner 
who  smote  himself  on  the  breast  while  asking 
pardon  for  his  sins  and  declared  this  latter 
nearer  perfection  than  the  former.  The  prodi- 
gal son  no  less  than  the  elder  son  in  the  par- 
able is,  in  Jesus'  eyes,  a  child  of  the  Eternal 
Goodness.  Thus,  to  give  courage  to  the  sin- 
ful, even  to  the  most  hardened ;  to  reanimate 
their  energies  by  words  of  hope,  even  when 
to  human  view  all  seems  lost ;  never  to  despair 
of  finding,  even  in  the  worst  of  men,  some  germ 

207 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

of  that  divine  life  which  he  has  stifled  and  pro- 
faned, but  has  not  been  able  to  destroy,  some 
remains  of  that  moral  dignity  on  which  he  has 
trampled,  but  not  killed ;  to  abate  the  pride 
of  the  self-righteous  by  making  them  sensible 
of  their  wretchedness,  to  humiliate  the  self- 
complacent  by  showing  them  that  their  self- 
satisfaction  is  the  sign  of  their  backwardness, 
to  open  to  all  the  vision  of  ever  closer  ap- 
proximation to  the  perfect,  on  the  road  to 
which  all  have  entered,  differing  only  in  the 
degree  of  progress  they  have  made,  —  this  is 
the  sublime  method  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus. 

3.  What  was  the  special  life-purpose  to 
which  he  consecrated  his  life  ?  It  was  to  pre- 
pare the  largest  possible  number  of  men  and 
women  for  membership  in  the  new  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  so  soon  to  appear  upon  the  earth. 
There  can  be  no  grander  aim  than  that.  And 
there  is  more  hope  for  the  world  in  one  Jesus, 
with  such  an  aim,  than  in  ten  thousand  men, 
trained  to  scientific  habits  of  thought,  yet 
without  any  such  transcendent  aim  to  which 
their  thought  shall  tend. 

208 


JESUS 

4.  Though  the  God-idea  has  undergone  con- 
siderable change  since  Jesus'  day,  his  trust  in 
God,  in  "the  Power  that  makes  for  righteous- 
ness," in  the  triumph  of  truth,  justice  and 
love,  remains  unchanged  and  indispensable. 
How  imperative  it  is,  that  amid  the  inequities 
and  iniquities  of  modern  life,  we  possess  this 
spirit  of  trust.  In  our  fight  against  these  evils 
what  is  there  to  sustain  us,  to  save  us  from 
being  victimized  by  scepticism  and  pessimism ; 
what  is  there  to  prevent  the  loss  of  spiritual 
poise  and  peace,  except  the  laying  firm  hold 
of  this  trust  that  was  in  the  heart  of  Jesus  ? 

Speaking  for  myself,  —  and  I  have  no  right 
to  speak  for  any  one  else,  —  I  confess  that 
while  I  cannot  accept  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
with  reference  to  marriage,  divorce,  wealth, 
intellectual  and  aesthetic  pursuits;  while  I 
cannot  share  his  belief  in  a  miraculously  es- 
tablished Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth,  I  do 
find  in  him  an  ever  inspiring  exemplar  of  sin- 
cerity, sympathy,  consecration  and  trust.  If 
I  were  to  say  in  just  one  word  what  Jesus  is 
to  me  it  would  be  inspiration.     Who  of  us 

p  209 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

can  contemplate  his  loyalty  to  conviction  and 
at  the  same  time  be  indifferent  to  that  which  is 
holiest  and  highest  in  ourselves  ?  Who  of  us 
can  meditate  upon  his  sympathy  for  man  and 
then  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  calls  for  sympathy 
and  practical  helpfulness  that  appeal  to  us  from 
every  side  ?  Who  of  us  can  ponder  his  devo- 
tion to  a  life-aim  transcendently  beautiful  and 
then  be  indifferent  to  the  promptings  of  the 
inner  voice  that  bids  us  live  the  divine  life  ? 
Who  can  recall  his  deep-seated  trust  in  the  ulti- 
mate triumph  of  truth  and  right,  the  reign  of 
justice  and  love,  and  not  feel  moved  to  a  like 
peace-giving  trust  ? 

We  hear  a  great  deal  in  our  day  about  "liv- 
ing a  spiritual  life."  Considerable  vagueness 
and  piousness  have  gathered  about  that  phrase; 
yet  in  its  essence  it  is  nothing  but  living  this 
very  life  that  Jesus  lived,  manifesting  in  our 
lesser  lives  that  same  spiritual  greatness  that 
was  revealed  by  him.  To  stand  upon  our 
own  feet,  to  exercise  a  manly  self-reliance,  to 
maintain  our  own  convictions,  let  the  opposi- 
tion be  what  it  may,  to  cultivate  the  spirit  of 

210 


JESUS 


sympathy  and  helpfulness  for  our  fellow-men, 
and,  above  all,  to  be  steadfastly  devoted  to  an 
ideal  life-aim,  all  the  while  sustained  and  in- 
spired by  faith  in  the  Eternal  Right,  —  this  is 
what  we  understand  by  living  a  spiritual  life. 
And  no  more  radiant  example  of  it  has  ever 
been  furnished  the  world  than  that  which  we 
see  in  Jesus. 

In  the  transition  from  Judaism  to  Chris- 
tianity Jesus  occupies  a  very  definite  and  dis- 
tinctive place.  Just  as  Gotama,  the  Buddha, 
was  born  and  died  a  Brahman  and  as  out  of  his 
protest  against  certain  defects  in  Brahmanism 
Buddhism  arose,  so  Jesus,  the  Christ,  was 
born  and  died  a  Jew,  and  out  of  his  protest 
against  certain  defects  in  Judaism  there  arose 
the  Christian  ethics,  for  which  the  apostle 
Paul  furnished  the  theological  framework. 
^Yhat  was  this  protest  of  Jesus  ?  It  was  a 
protest  against  the  external,  formal  character 
of  contemporary  Jewish  ethics;  against  a 
morality  of  mere  conformity  to  and  compli- 
ance with  the  demands  of  an  external  standard 
of  conduct,  and  in  favor  of  a  morality  of  the 

211 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

spirit  that  takes  account  of  the  hidden  motives 
behind  all  human  actions.  "Fulfil  the  law 
of  righteousness,"  —  this  was  the  Hebrew  an- 
swer to  the  question,  What  is  the  chief  end  of 
man  ?  That  law  originally  consisted  of  a 
few  simple  rules,  but  eventually  it  was  ex- 
panded into  the  elaborate  system  of  legisla- 
tion found  in  the  Pentateuch,  and  this,  in  turn, 
became  the  basis  for  further  legislation,  pre- 
served in  the  Talmud.  Thus  by  the  time 
Jesus  appeared  Judaism  had  developed  an 
immense  mass  of  rules  and  regulations  for  the 
conduct  of  life,  and  goodness  meant  conform- 
ity to  the  requirements  of  this  outward  stand- 
ard. But  by  its  very  externalism  and  formal 
character  the  system  tended  to  draw  the  heart 
and  the  will  away  from  those  inward  sources 
of  right  action  on  which  alone  their  true  moral 
quality  depends.  Life  became  split  up  into 
innumerable  forms  of  conduct,  each  having 
its  own  particular  law  or  rule,  to  violate  which 
was  sin.  No  distinction  being  drawn  between 
kinds  of  sin,  it  was  held  that  he  who  offends  in 
one  point  of  the  law  offends  in  all,  —  a  posi- 

212 


JESUS 


tion  clearly  stated  in  the  epistle  of  James  (ii. 
10).  As  a  result  Judaism  tended  to  despiritu- 
alize  life  and  by  its  stress  on  conformity  to  an 
external  standard  of  conduct  as  the  test  of 
goodness,  to  make  the  latter  a  garment  that 
might  be  put  on  or  off,  rather  than  a  constant, 
maintained  habit  of  the  soul.  Already  in  the 
seventh  century  this  danger  in  the  develop- 
ment of  Judaism  was  recognized  by  the  Deu- 
teronomist.  Read  his  passionate  plea  in  the 
thirtieth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy  that  men 
should  look  within  and  see  Yahweh's  will 
written  in  their  own  hearts.  Later  came  Jere- 
miah and  Ezekiel  with  their  appeal  for  the 
performance  of  the  righteousness  that  is  in 
the  heart.  Still  later  came  the  psalmists  of  the 
Greek  and  of  the  Maccabean  period,  with  their 
spiritual  songs  on  the  need  of  "a  clean  heart" 
and  of  "renewal  of  spirit,"  intimating  their 
consciousness  of  a  morality  of  the  spirit  which 
goes  back  of  rules  and  regulations  to  motives 
and  aims  and  which  is  therefore  deeper  than 
the  morality  of  conformity  and  compliance. 
But  no  one,  not  even  the  great  Hillel,  —  who 

213 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

r 

was  an  old  man  when  Jesus  was  an  infant,  — 
had  sought  to  separate  this  spiritual  righteous- 
ness from  the  system  of  legislation  in  which  it 
lay  embedded  and  lift  it  to  a  commanding 
place  in  the  ordering  of  daily  life.  Mark  you, 
it  must  not  be  said  that  Judaism  was  deficient 
in  spirituality.  Any  one  familiar  with  the 
literature  between  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments knows  there  was  no  lack  of  this  grace 
even  when  the  legal  system  was  most  elaborate 
and  detailed.  But  no  one  had  extricated  this 
morality  of  the  spirit  —  recognized  and  taught 
as  it  was  by  the  immediate  predecessor  of 
Jesus  —  out  from  the  mass  of  legislation  and 
made  it  the  corner-stone  of  the  moral  life. 
This  it  remained  for  Jesus  to  achieve  and  in 
achieving  it,  he  transcended  the  Judaism  of  his 
time.  Perceiving  that  the  spirit  behind  an  act 
is  what  gives  it  moral  worth,  Jesus  took  this 
spiritual  morality  out  from  the  mass  of  rules 
where  Hillel  had  left  it  and  made  it  the  su- 
preme and  controlling  principle  of  conduct. 
Higher  than  the  morality  of  obedience  to  an 
external  standard  of  Jewish  law  is  the  morality 

214 


JESUS 

of  obedience  to  an  internal  standard  which 
cannot  be  gauged  by  any  mechanical  means 
whatsoever.  Higher  than  visible  conformity 
to  rules  regarding  what  must  be  done  and  still 
more  regarding  what  must  not  be  done,  is  the 
invisible  motive  behind  that  conformity.  Such 
was  the  contribution  of  Jesus  to  Judaism. 
Herein  lay  his  originality.  I  grant  with  the 
distinguished  Rabbi  Hirsch  that  Jesus  uttered 
no  new  maxims,  that  one  can  match  every  pre- 
cept of  the  sermon  on  the  mount  in  contem- 
porary or  earlier  Jewish  literature.  I  grant 
that  in  method  and  in  thought  Jesus  was  a 
Jewish  "haggadist,"  that  his  similes  are  indige- 
nous to  the  "Midrash"  and  were  frequently 
used  in  the  picture-language  of  the  rabbinical 
homilies.  I  grant  that  in  none  of  these  re- 
spects has  he  the  slightest  claim  to  originality, 
yet  it  still  remains  true  that  there  is  another 
respect  in  which  that  claim  of  originality  may 
be  legitimately  made  for  him.  For  the  origi- 
nal reformer  is  not  only  he  who  first  conceives  a 
fruitful  idea,  but  also  he  who  plants  it  in  many 
minds  and  fertilizes  it  there  by  the  persuasive 

215 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

power  of  his  own  quickening  personality.  To 
this  type  of  original  reformers  Jesus  belonged. 
He  preached  the  loftiest  moral  conceptions 
his  race  had  won,  and  vitalized  them  by  his 
commanding,  winning  presence.  Even  as  the 
transcendent  merit  of  the  tree  consists  in  its 
drawing  from  the  surrounding  air,  earth  and 
water,  the  materials  wherewith  to  build  the 
strength  of  its  trunk  and  the  beauty  of  its 
foliage,  so  the  transcendent  merit  of  Jesus 
lay  in  his  drawing  from  earlier  and  contem- 
porary literature  the  material  wherewith  to 
make  his  gospel  a  source  of  strength  and  in- 
spiration, stamping  what  he  borrowed  with 
his  own  spiritual  genius.^  And  this  genius 
showed  itself  nowhere  more  grandly  than  in 
the  way  he  related  his  gospel  to  the  Jewish 
law,  presenting  it  as  simply  a  development,  an 
expansion,  a  deepening  of  that  law.  Jesus 
never  cut  himself  off  from  Judaism,  never 
attempted  to  organize  a  new  religion.  On  the 
contrary,  he  was  throughout  his  entire  life  a 
loyal  Jew,  observing  all  the  ordinances.     He 

1  Rabbi  E.  G.  Hirsch,  The  Crucifixion. 
216 


JESUS 

kept  the  fasts  and  feasts  of  the  Hebrew  calen- 
dar.^ He  insisted  that  the  ceremonial  law 
should  be  scrupulously  obeyed.^  He  even 
went  so  far  as  to  say  that  not  one  jot  or  tittle 
of  the  law  would  remain  unfulfilled  while 
heaven  and  earth  remained.^  Lest  any  one 
should  think  him  a  ruthless,  reckless  icono- 
clast, a  negative  revolutionist  in  religion,  he 
said,  "Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  destroy  the 
law  or  the  prophets.  I  am  come  to  carry 
them  out."  And  he  might  have  added,  to 
develop,  to  expand  them,  to  bring  out  their 
latent  deeper  meaning;  for  this  was  precisely 
what  he  did.  "Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath 
been  said  by  them  of  old,"  quoting  from  the 
twentieth  chapter  of  Exodus,  "thou  shalt  do 
no  murder."  "But  I  say  unto  you  that  who- 
soever is  as  much  (as  angry)  with  his  brother 
shall  be  in  danger  of  the  judgment."  It  is 
not  enough,  he  contends,  to  obey  the  sixth 
commandment,  not  enough  to  stop  at  the  law 
of  murder ;  you  must  go  down  to  the  source  of 

1  Mk.  xiv.  12.  2  Mt.  xxiii.  2. 

» Mt.  V.  18. 

217 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

murder  in  the  passion  of  anger  in  the  heart 
that  it  may  be  utterly  consumed  and  thus  no 
more  provoke  to  murderous  deeds.  It  is  not 
enough  to  refrain  from  the  adulterous  act; 
you  must  go  down  to  the  source  of  it  in  the  evil 
desire  of  the  heart,  —  there  lies  the  root  of  the 
sin,  and  duty  calls  for  its  extirpation.  Purify 
the  inner  springs  of  conduct,  be  not  content 
with  avoidance  of  evil  deeds,  remember  that 
not  only  the  act  itself  constitutes  the  evil, 
but,  still  more,  the  prompting  of  the  heart 
that  leads  to  it.  Go  down  below  the  killing 
to  the  wrath,  below  the  adultery  to  the  lust. 
Again,  he  bids  his  hearers  love  their  enemies 
and  contrasts  his  precept  with  the  ancient 
saying  thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  and  hate 
thine  enemy.  Here  Jesus  quotes  no  passage 
from  the  Old  Testament  but  expresses  the 
actual  attitude  and  spirit  of  Hebrew  ethics  in 
Old  Testament  times.  The  highest  ethical 
reach  of  the  Old  Testament  is  love  of  one's 
personal  enemy.  Nowhere  in  its  pages  is 
love  of  national  enemies  inculcated.  On  the 
contrary,  we  observe  that  the  logic  of  wor- 

218 


JESUS 

shipping  Yahweh  as  Israel's  God  and  of  re- 
garding Israel  as  His  chosen  people  led  directly 
to  hatred  of  foreigners  (enemies)  as  an  inevi- 
table consequence  of  this  unique  privilege. 
Jeremiah,  the  Deuteronomist,  and  the  author 
of  the  one  hundred  and  thirty-ninth  psalm 
(to  cite  typical  instances),  regarded  hatred 
of  foreigners  as  not  only  inevitable,  but  also 
praiseworthy.  In  unqualified  opposition  to 
this  attitude  Jesus  pleads  for  a  cosmopolitan 
love  that  shall  extend  beyond  one's  personal 
enemies  to  the  hated  Romans.  Oppressors 
and  persecutors  though  they  be,  yet  out  of 
very  love  for  them,  he  says,  pray  for  them.  In 
bold  and  powerful  contrast  to  the  cry  of  the 
psalmist,  "Do  I  not  hate  them  that  hate  thee, 
O  Lord,"^  there  stands  the  exquisite  simile  of 
the  sunshine  and  the  rain  which  the  Divine 
Goodness  gives  to  the  just  and  to  the  unjust 
alike,  a  simile  which  Jesus  uses  to  exhort  his 
hearers  to  be  as  impartial  and  as  unrestrained 
and  as  unbounded  in  their  love.  The  supreme 
commandment  of  Jesus  was,  "Be  ye  perfect, 

^  Ps.  cxxxix.  21 ;  cf.  Ps.  cxxxvii.  8,  9. 
219 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

even  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect." 
In  that  utterance  Jesus  gave  infinite  signifi- 
cance to  every  humblest  human  being,  because 
it  impHes  that  there  are  infinite  possibiHties 
in  every  child  of  God. 

The  gospel  of  Christianity,  therefore,  as 
derived  from  Jesus,  consists,  not  in  obedience 
to  an  external  standard,  but  in  what  may  be 
called  spiritual  righteousness,  or  the  morality 
of  the  spirit.  Of  that  gospel  there  are  hints 
in  the  Jewish  literature  of  earlier  times,  but 
no  one  had  succeeded  in  giving  it  special 
emphasis,  no  one  had  detached  it  from  the 
legal  system  in  which  it  was  embedded  and 
made  of  it  a  new  moral  issue.  This  is  what 
Jesus  did  and  it  marks  the  distinctive  char- 
acteristic of  his  message.  According  to  this, 
each  human  being  is  a  child  of  God,  endowed 
with  power  to  come  into  perfect  harmony 
with  Him,  and  the  single-hearted  desire  for 
that  harmony  is  the  supreme  motive  for 
doing  what  is  right.  To  become  truly  chil- 
dren of  their  heavenly  Father,  to  become 
worthy  of  their  divine  kinship,  this,  he  held, 

220 


JESUS 


is  the  highest  reason  why  men  and  women 
should  do  what  is  right.  Hence  the  ideal  life, 
according  to  Jesus,  is  the  life  of  the  spirit, 
the  life  of  union  with  the  Eternal  Life,  the 
life  of  self-dedication  to  supreme  holiness. 
Note  that  the  concern  of  Jesus  is  exclusively 
with  individual  men  and  women  and  their 
reproduction  of  the  divine  love.  The  prob- 
lem of  improving  the  political,  social,  indus- 
trial conditions  of  Palestine  lay  wholly  out- 
side his  sphere.  He  looked  to  a  higher  than 
human  agency  for  the  transformation  of  exist- 
ing conditions,  confining  his  attention  to  the 
immediate  need  of  each  individual  soul,  viz. 
to  become  fitted  for  membership  in  the  coming 
Kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  Jesus,  therefore, 
was  not  a  socialist,  as  is  sometimes  claimed. 
He  came,  not  to  readjust  external  conditions, 
not  to  attempt  any  reorganization  of  society  on 
altered  economic  and  political  principles,  but 
only  to  refine  men's  hearts,  to  quicken  in  each 
human  soul  he  addressed  the  sense  of  its  divine 
origin,  and  its  infinite  possibilities  and  to  show 
forth  the  real  moral  worth  of  human  actions. 

221 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

Just  as  Buddhism  became  an  organized 
religion  only  after  the  death  of  Gotama,  so 
Christianity  only  after  the  death  of  Jesus. 
It  is  to  the  apostle  Paul  that  we  must  turn 
as  the  founder  of  organized  Christianity.  It 
was  he  who  cut  loose  from  Judaism  bv  the 
surrender  of  his  allegiance  to  the  Jewish  law 
and  ceremonial  and  the  adoption  of  the 
crucified  and  risen  Jesus  as  the  new  and  only 
means  of  salvation.  Paul  took  the  ground 
that  man  is  constitutionally  incapable  of  ful- 
filling the  law  of  righteousness.  In  the 
seventh  chapter  of  his  letter  to  the  Romans 
he  laid  bare  the  innermost  experience  of  his 
soul,  his  utter  wretchedness  because  of  the 
warfare  between  his  carnal  and  his  spiritual 
nature,  the  latter  overpowered  by  the  former 
in  the  struggle  to  fulfil  the  law  of  righteous- 
ness. Some  other  means  of  salvation  must 
be  found.  Pondering  the  problem,  there  came 
to  him  the  wonderful  story  of  Jesus.  Here, 
thought  Paul,  is  One  who  did  succeed  in  ful- 
filling the  law  of  righteousness  and  whose 
crucifixion  was  the  symbol  of  his  compassion 

222 


JESUS 

for  sin-stained  man,  taking  it  upon  himself 
to  serve  as  man's  Redeemer.  None  of  the 
gospels  had  as  yet  been  written  when  Paul 
reached  his  solution  of  the  problem.  Believ- 
ing that  Jesus  differed  from  all  other  beings 
in  hind  as  well  as  degree,  Paul  thought  that 
if  only  the  perfect  righteousness  of  this  ex- 
ceptional person  could  be  borrowed,  salvation 
would  be  secured.  And  he  argued  that  it 
could  be  borrowed  by  the  exercise  of  '*  faith," 
meaning  thereby  a  mystical  "putting  on  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,"  being  dominated  in 
all  one's  thought,  feeling  and  conduct  by  the 
spirit  that  was  in  him.  Thus,  whereas  Jesus 
was  buoyed  up  by  the  sense  of  the  divine 
power  with  which  man  has  been  endowed, 
making  him  equal  to  the  task  of  doing  the 
Divine  will,  Paul  was  overcome  by  a  sense 
of  moral  incapacity  and  turned  to  the  virtue- 
power  of  the  crucified  and  risen  Christ,  be- 
lieving that  thereby  alone  could  man  come 
into  at-one-ment  with  God.  Upon  this  belief 
the  new  religion  was  founded,  a  Christian 
being  differentiated  from  the  representatives 

223 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

of  every  other  religion  by  his  behef  in  the 
exceptional  character  of  Jesus,  who  alone  of 
all  men  was  able,  through  his  perfection,  to 
fulfil  the  law  of  righteousness  and  thereby 
became  the  fitting  instrument  to  bring  about 
the  reconciliation  of  man  to  God. 


224 


VII 
MOHAMMED 


VII 

MOHAMMED 

^CHRONOLOGICALLY  the  latest  of  the 
^"^  great  moral  leaders  whose  life  and  work 
we  are  studying  is  Mohammed.  Like  Moses, 
the  Prophets,  Jesus  and  Paul,  Mohammed 
belonged  to  the  Semitic  branch  of  the  hu- 
man family.  He  was  the  founder  of  the 
least  appreciated  and  most  misunderstood 
of  the  world's  great  religions.  It  originated 
thirteen  centuries  ago  on  the  Arabian  penin- 
sula, where  the  streams  of  commerce  and 
culture  met  and  mingled  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
where  the  markets  of  exchange  were  stationed 
or  the  treasures  of  India  and  the  products  of 
the  Mediterranean  coasts.  There  this  re- 
ligion was  established  in  the  unprecedented 
short  period  of  twenty  years  and,  unlike  many 
another  religion,  without  the  aid  of  any  royal 
patronage   and   support.     Buddhism   had   its 

227 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

Asoka,  Zoroastrianism  its  Vislitaspa,  Judaism 
its  Joshua,  Christianity  its  Constantine,  but 
Mohammedanism  had  no  person  of  royal 
rank  and  power  to  assist  in  its  estabHshment 
and  spread. 

To-day  this  religion  is  acknowledged  by 
nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  million  souls 
and  extends  over  an  area  equal  to  one-third 
of  the  globe.  From  Arabia  it  spread  east- 
ward over  Persia,  Turkestan,  Afghanistan ; 
westward,  across  Syria,  Asia  Minor,  Turkey; 
southward,  to  Africa,  covering  more  than  half 
of  that  continent.  It  found  its  way  to  India, 
and  beyond,  to  the  islands  of  Sumatra,  Java 
and  Borneo. 

Already  within  the  first  fifty  years  of  its 
formation  this  religion  extended  from  the 
Indus  to  the  Tagus  and  from  the  Volga  to 
the  Arabian  Sea.  The  Niger  and  the  Nile, 
the  Jordan  and  the  Ganges,  the  Maritza  and 
the  Yang-tse-Kiang,  all  fertilize  Mohammedan 
soil.  Twice  did  this  religion  threaten  to  over- 
run Europe.  Days  there  have  been  that  were 
big  with  the  fate  of  the  world.     On  such  a 

228 


MOHAMMED 

day  Themistocles  met  Xerxes,  ordaining  that 
Europe  should  receive  her  civihzation  from 
Greece  rather  than  from  Persia.  On  such  a 
day,  in  the  year  732,  Charles  Martel  met 
Abd-er-Rahman  and  forthwith  the  cross,  not 
the  crescent,  became  the  emblem  of  European 
faith.  So,  again,  in  1683,  when  John,  King 
of  Poland,  at  the  head  of  twenty  thousand 
soldiers  defeated  the  Mohammedan  army  at 
Vienna,  it  was  once  more  decreed  that  Mo- 
hammedanism should  not  be  the  religion  of 
Europe.  Yet  it  must  be  remembered  that  to 
the  early  representatives  of  this  faith  the 
world's  debt  is  incalculably  great.  For  it 
was  they  who  transmitted  the  treasures  of 
Greek  literature  from  the  Middle  Ages  to  the 
Renaissance ;  they  who  originated  the  grace- 
ful art  forms  of  which  the  Taj -Mahal  and  the 
Alhambra  are  the  most  famous  examples.  It 
was  they  who  contributed  to  the  sciences  of 
algebra  and  chemistry,  astronomy  and  medi- 
cine; they  who  dotted  the  Saracen  empire 
with  universities  and  who  built  at  Bagdad 
and  at  Cairo  the  most  renowned  libraries  in 

229 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

the  world.  During  those  centuries  of  ecclesi- 
astical despotism  when  the  Christian  Church 
suppressed  all  intellectual  activities  save  those 
that  were  theological,  causing  the  talent  that 
reproduces  to  supplant  the  genius  that  creates, 
Mohammedans  did  all  in  their  power  to  en- 
courage and  stimulate  research  in  every 
branch  of  human  inquiry.  No  mediaeval 
pope  or  bishop  ever  sent  thanks  to  a  thinker 
for  scientific  discovery,  but  the  sheik,  Ul- 
Islam,  sent  congratulations  and  the  benedic- 
tion of  Allah  to  Al  Hassan  for  his  discovery 
of  a  fundamental  law  in  optics.  When  Lon- 
don was  a  city  of  hovels  and  the  stench  in 
its  streets  such  that  no  one  could  breathe  its 
polluted  air  with  impunity,  Cordova  was 
noted  for  the  cleanliness  and  beauty  of  her 
streets  and  squares.  Arabic  is  the  most 
widely-spoken  language  in  the  world  and 
though  Chinese  characters  are  used  by  more 
people,  knowledge  of  Arabic  will  carry  one 
farther  round  the  world.  And  with  the 
Arabic  vocabulary  has  gone  the  Mohammedan 
religion.     To-day  we  decorate  our  walls  and 

230 


MOHAMMED 

floors  with  fabrics  that  Mohammedans  taught 
us  to  weave.  We  regale  our  senses  with  per- 
fumes they  taught  us  to  make,  we  teach  our 
children  the  algebra  and  higher  mathematics 
which  they  taught  the  fathers. 

It  seemed  to  me  essential  to  the  formation 
of  a  just  and  adequate  appreciation  of  Mo- 
hammed and  his  work  that  these  preliminary 
statements  should  be  made,  all  the  more 
because  of  the  still  widespread  impression 
that  indebtedness  is  on  the  side  of  Moham- 
medans alone,  that  they  owe  to  the  civilizing 
agencies  of  Christianity  their  gradual  emer- 
gence from  semi-barbarism  !  Can  we  afford 
to  forget  how  different  Christian  civilization 
itself  would  have  been  but  for  the  beneficent 
devotion  of  mediaeval  Mohammedans  to  cul- 
ture "^  And  is  it  not  true  that  many  a  civiliz- 
ing agency  from  which  non-Christian  peoples 
have  profited  cannot  properly  be  ascribed  to 
Christianity  or  to  any  religion  whatsoever, 
but  only  to  sources  that  are  essentially  secu- 
lar in  their  nature  ?  It  is  high  time  we  exer- 
cised discrimination  in  our  accounting  for  the 

231 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

civilization  the  world  has  reached.  Great  as 
the  influence  of  Christianity  unquestionably 
has  been,  it  must  be  reckoned  as  only  one  of 
many  factors  that  have  contributed  to  the 
advancement  of  society.  Moreover,  it  should 
be  remembered  that  there  are  phases  of  non- 
Christian  civilization  notably,  in  China,  as  we 
have  seen,  equal,  if  not  superior,  to  what  we 
observe  in  the  Christian  civilization  of  Eu- 
rope and  America. 

Mohammed  has  been  called  "the  lying 
prophet."  His  name  has  been  used  as  a 
synonym  for  Satan,  and  his  followers  have 
been  described  as  "part  of  the  infernal  host." 
Dante  described  him  as  rent  from  the  chin 
to  where  the  body  ends,  wandering  aimlessly 
about  in  the  darkest  region  of  hell  among 
those  who  rent  Christianity  by  controversy 
and  schism.  Luther,  in  one  of  his  vehement 
expostulations  upon  people  he  despised,  ex- 
claimed, "Oh  fie,  you  horrid  devil,  you  damned 
Mohammed."  Melancthon  declared  that  Mo- 
hammed was  "inspired  by  Satan."  For  seven 
centuries    after    the    prophet's    death,    not   a 

232 


MOHAMMED 

public  word  In  his  defence  or  behalf  was 
heard.  The  first  just  and  kindly  utterance 
came  from  the  lips  of  Sir  John  Mandeville, 
an  English  traveller,  and  his  tribute  sounds 
like  a  bugle-note  in  the  long,  dark  night  of 
bigotry  and  hate.  Four  centuries  later,  Les- 
slng,  in  his  "Nathan  der  Weise,"  paused  to  pay 
his  respects  to  the  essential  worth  of  Moham- 
med's religion,  and  by  his  parable  of  the 
three  rings,  taught  posterity  a  permanently 
helpful  lesson  In  the  ethics  of  criticism.  And 
then  came  Carlyle,  fairly  stunning  the  British 
public  by  placing  Mohammed  among  the 
heroes  of  history.  Yet  notwithstanding  the 
enlightening  utterances  of  these  candid  inves- 
tigators, prejudice,  born  of  ignorance,  persists 
in  maintaining  and  circulating  opinions  about 
Mohammed  that  are  without  any  valid  basis 
whatsoever.  Pulpit,  platform  and  press  must 
all  plead  guilty  of  unwarranted  misrepresen- 
tation. I  cite  the  preacher  who  described 
Mohammed  as  "a  fanatic  who  used  his  religion 
as  a  cloak  for  immorality."  I  quote  a  lec- 
turer who  said  that   "Mohammed's   religion 

233 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

was  synonymous  with  bravery,  bigotry, 
knavery,  sensuality  and  abysmal  ignorance." 
I  recall  the  definition  of  Mohammedanism  in 
Webster's  Dictionary  —  "a  religion  of  im- 
posture." Even  the  best  Christian  biogra- 
phies are  marred  by  the  baneful  effect  of 
prejudice  and  by  predilections  so  strong  as  to 
have  led  Renan  to  say  that  it  is  unreasonable 
to  expect  an  orthodox  Christian  to  do  justice 
to  the  religion  of  Mohammed.  No  less  dis- 
appointing are  such  Mohammedan  biographies 
as  that  of  Ameer  Seyd  Ali  (for  some  years  a 
judge  on  the  British  bench  in  Bengal),  in 
which  the  best  in  Mohammedanism  is  con- 
trasted with  the  worst  in  Christianity.  The 
truth  is,  an  adequate,  satisfying  life  of  Mo- 
hammed has  yet  to  be  written,  and  I  venture 
the  statement  that  the  forthcoming  volume 
by  Professor  Goldziher,  perhaps  the  foremost 
living  authority  on  Islam,  will  prove  to  be 
the  desired  work. 

Mohammed  was  born  in  571  at  Mecca, 
one  of  the  chief  centres  of  Arabian  commerce, 
and    culture,    visited    annually   by   over   two 

234 


MOHAMMED 


hundred  thousand  pilgrims,  In  accordance 
with  the  Moslem  law  requiring  a  pilgrimage 
thither  at  least  once  during  the  lifetime  of 
every  believer.  The  prophet's  father  died 
before  the  child  was  born  and  his  mother, 
before  he  had  reached  his  teens.  How  deeply 
he  felt  the  deprivations  of  orphanage  Is 
attested  by  many  a  passage  in  the  Qur'an, 
enjoining  upon  the  faithful  tender  regard  for 
the  person  of  orphans  and  scrupulous  care 
not  to  touch  their  property.  Thus,  In  the 
fourth  "Sura,"  we  read:  ''Did  not  Allah 
find  thee  an  orphan  and  hath  he  not  taken 
care  of  thee  .^  And  did  he  not  find  thee  wan- 
dering In  error,  and  hath  he  not  guided  thee 
into  truth  ?  And  did  he  not  find  thee  needy, 
and  hath  he  not  enriched  thee  ?  Wherefore 
oppress  not  the  orphan :  neither  repulse  the 
beggar;  but  declare  the  goodness  of  thy 
Lord."  Bereft  of  both  father  and  mother  the 
lad  was  adopted,  first  by  his  grandfather  and 
later  by  his  uncle,  a  rich,  generous,  magnani- 
mous man,  who  though  disapproving  of  his 
nephew's    radical    tendencies    in   religion    yet 

235 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

on  grounds  of  kinship  gave  him  freely  of  the 
abundance  of  his  possessions.  But  one  day- 
financial  reverses  came  to  this  noble  guardian 
and  the  boy  was  obliged  to  earn  his  own 
living.  For  several  years  he  tended  sheep  on 
the  neighboring  hills,  till,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
four,  he  entered  the  service  of  a  rich  widow. 
Kadi j  ah  by  name,  acting  as  camel  driver  and 
conductor  of  caravans  journeying  between 
Jerusalem  and  Damascus.  So  infatuated  was 
she  with  Mohammed  that  she  married  him, 
and  though  she  was  fifteen  years  his  senior, 
their  married  life  seems  to  have  been  both 
happy  and  mutually  inspiring.  When  I  think 
of  Kadijah  as  Mohammed's  wife,  I  recall,  by 
contrast,  Lucrezia  del  Fede,  the  wife  of 
Andrea  del  Sarto,  the  so-called  "  faultless 
painter,"  one  who  was  able  to  correct  faults 
in  the  drawing  of  Raphael  and  Michael  Angelo, 
but  who  lacked  their  spiritual  genius.  Yet 
Andrea  felt  he  might  have  rivalled  them  both 
even  here,  if  only  Lucrezia  had  given  him 
sympathy,  understanding  and  inspiration.  All 
three  Kadijah  gave  Mohammed.     She  did  for 

236 


MOHAMMED 

him  just  what  It  is  in  the  power  of  woman  to 
do  for  man,  what  ordinary  women  do  in  a 
commonplace  way,  what  great  women  do  in 
a  divine  way ;  what  Vittoria  Colonna  did  for 
Michael  Angelo,  Frau  von  Stein  for  Goethe, 
Elizabeth  Barrett  for  Robert  Browning,  Mar- 
garet Fuller  for  James  Freeman  Clarke.  I 
mean  that  Kadi j  ah  kept  Mohammed  true  to 
his  highest  aspirations,  challenged  him  to  the 
best  of  which  he  was  capable,  restored  his 
courage  and  zeal  when  enthusiasm  waned  and 
inertia  came  on,  nursed  him  in  his  days  of 
illness,  strengthened  him  in  his  hours  of 
weakness,  sustained  and  inspired  him  in  his 
aim  to  be  worthy  the  high  calling  whereunto 
he  had  been  called. 

No  authentic  portrait  of  Mohammed  has 
come  down  to  us,  chiefly  because  of  that 
abhorrence  of  idolatry  and  image-worship 
which  the  prophet  instilled  into  the  hearts  of 
his  followers.  All  the  portraits  that  have 
come  down  to  us  are  outright  fabrications, 
in  the  production  of  which  imagination  and 
prejudice     have     proven     powerful     creative 

237 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

agencies.  Nevertheless,  from  various  sources, 
especially  the  "Sunna"  or  tradition,  we  are 
enabled  to  form  a  mental  picture  of  Mo- 
hammed's personal  appearance.  A  man  of 
medium  height,  he  was,  with  a  large,  well- 
shaped  head;  his  dark,  curly  hair  streaming 
down  upon  his  broad  shoulders  and  his  rest- 
less eye  looking  out  beneath  heavy  eye- 
lashes and  heavier  eyebrows.  His  nose  was 
slightly  aquiline  and  his  teeth  were  regular 
and  white  as  hailstones.  His  was  the  simple 
life,  lived  at  times  to  the  point  of  severe 
austerity.  For  we  read  that  he  would  some- 
times go  for  months  without  eating  a  single 
hearty  meal,  lighting  his  own  fire,  cooking 
his  own  food,  mending  his  clothes  and  shoes 
in  order  that  his  slaves  might  enjoy  a  larger 
share  of  freedom.  As  indicative  of  a  fine 
personal  trait  with  which  he  is  not  generally 
credited,  the  following  story  serves  a  useful 
purpose.  Sleeping  one  day  beneath  a  palm- 
tree  he  was  startled  on  awakening  to  find  an 
old  enemy,  Duthur,  standing  over  him.  with 
drawn    sword.     "O    Mohammed,"    he    cried, 

238 


MOHAMMED 


*' who  is  there  now  to  save  thee  ?"  To  which 
Mohammed  promptly  replied,  "  God."  Where- 
upon Duthur  dropped  the  sword.  Moham- 
med seizing  it,  arose  and  said,  "Who  is  there 
now  to  save  thee,  Duthur?"  "No  one,"  he 
answered.  "Then  learn  from  me  to  be  merci- 
ful," said  Mohammed  and  handed  him  back 
the  sword.  Not  far  from  Mohammed's  home, 
on  a  high  bluff  overlooking  the  blazing  sands 
of  the  desert,  was  a  cave  and  thither  he  fre- 
quently retired  to  study,  —  not  books,  for  he 
could  not  read,  but  Nature  and  the  tablets 
of  his  own  heart.  Afflicted  with  a  nervous 
disorder  that  sometimes  caused  loss  of  con- 
sciousness, it  was  in  one  of  these  attacks, 
while  meditating  in  the  cave,  that  he  became 
apprised  of  his  mission.  Tradition  tells  us 
that  he  fell  into  convulsions,  streams  of  per- 
spiration rolled  down  his  cheeks,  his  eyes 
burned  like  glowing  coals,  and  as  he  was 
about  to  end  his  misery  by  leaping  over  the 
bluff  he  heard  the  voice  of  the  angel  Gabriel 
saying,  "Stop,  thou  art  the  prophet  of  the 
Lord."     Running  to  Kadijah,  he  exclaimed, 

239 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

"Am  I  in  truth  a  prophet,  or  am  I  mad?" 
To  which  Kadijah  answered :  "  Thou  hast 
spoken  truly ;  no  harmful  thing  has  hap- 
pened thee;  thou  dost  not  return  evil  for 
evil ;  thou  art  kind  to  relatives  and  friends. 
Rejoice,  thou  wilt  be  the  prophet  of  proph- 
ets." What  a  significant  reply !  For  as- 
suredlv  there  can  be  no  safer  test  of  fitness 
for  a  prophetic  career  than  the  possession  of 
precisely  such  moral  traits.  But  Mohammed 
hesitated  at  first,  just  as  Jesus  and  Gotama 
and  Zoroaster  hesitated  before  entering  upon 
their  prophetic  calling.  The  temptation 
legends,  related  of  these  leaders, —  what  are 
they  but  the  figurative  expression  of  that 
moment  of  doubt  as  to  the  true  path  of  duty 
which  all  four  experienced  prior  to  assump- 
tion of  the  prophetic  office.'*  And  precisely 
as  Jesus  was  obliged  to  go  from  Nazareth  to 
Capernaum,  in  the  hope  that  there  he  would 
receive  a  respectful  hearing,  so  Gotama 
turned  from  Kapilavasta  to  Benares,  Con- 
fucius from  Lu  to  the  northern  provinces  of 
China,     and     Mohammed     from    Mecca    to 

240 


MOHAMMED 

Medina ;  proving  once  more  the  truth  of  the 
saying  that  "a  prophet  is  not  without  honor 
save  in  his  own  country."  Hearing  that 
assassination  was  planned,  Mohammed  re- 
solved on  flight,  making  his  memorable  escape 
in  the  dead  of  night,  July  16,  622,  to  the 
city  north  of  Mecca,  now  known  as  Medina. 
This  year  of  the  flight,  or  "Hejira,"  marks 
the  beginning  of  the  Mohammedan  era. 

Throughout  his  ten  years'  ministry  at 
Mecca,  Mohammed  had  been  simply  a  re- 
former of  manners  and  morals,  denouncing 
the  vices  of  his  countrymen,  rebuking  low 
standards  of  business  dealing  and  decrying 
the  crass  idolatry  into  which  his  own  native 
Arabian  religion  had  degenerated.  Hitherto 
he  had  been  only  a  Jeremiah,  preaching  in 
the  wilderness;  now,  at  Medina,  he  is  a 
Hildebrand,  ruling  with  an  autocratic  hand. 
He  assumes  the  role  of  legislator,  social  and 
political  organizer,  conqueror.  He  drafts  a 
new  charter  for  the  city,  defines  the  duties  of 
citizens,  converts  indiscriminate  almsgiving 
into  systematic  taxation  for  the  support  of 

K  241 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

his  theoc^ac3^  prohibits  intersectarian  warfare 
and  compels  the  disputants  to  submit  their 
differences  to  him  for  settlement.  Finally, 
he  leads  an  aggressive,  conquering  crusade, 
winning  over  all  Arabia  to  his  message  and 
claims.  For  nearly  ten  years  he  conducted 
this  singularly  successful  work,  till,  on  the 
eighth  of  June,  632,  he  died,  leaving  to  Abu- 
Bekr  (his  beloved  disciple)  and  to  succeeding 
califs,  the  task  of  missionary  expansion  which 
gradually  resulted  in  establishing  the  founder's 
faith  over  an  empire  greater  than  that  of 
Rome. 

To  understand  and  appreciate  just  what 
it  was  that  Mohammed  accomplished,  we 
must  recall  the  conditions  that  obtained  in 
mediaeval  Arabia. 

For  several  centuries  prior  to  the  birth  of 
Mohammed,  communities  of  Jews  and  Chris- 
tians had  been  living  there  in  close  social  and 
political  relation  with  the  natives.  This  con- 
tiguity and  intercourse  formed  a  favorable 
condition  for  the  production  of  a  type  of 
religion  broader  and  better  than  any  one  of 

242 


MOHAMMED 

the  three  as  they  then  existed.  Given  such 
social  and  political  interrelation  among  three 
distinct  peoples,  and  there  will  occur  a  spon- 
taneous sifting  of  religious  beliefs  and  rites. 
What  remains  will  commend  itself  to  the 
whole  mixed  community.  We  see  this  process 
illustrated  in  the  formation  of  the  pantheons 
of  Egypt  and  Babylonia,  shaped  as  they  were 
in  response  to  such  social  unification  followed 
by  a  sifting  of  theological  material.  We  see 
it  again  in  the  Hebrew  polytheism  of  the 
twelfth  century  before  our  era,  which  resulted 
from  political  and  social  fusion  with  the 
native  Canaanites,  followed  by  a  similar  sift- 
ing of  religious  ideas.  So  also  in  Arabia  in 
the  seventh  century  of  our  era  a  correspond- 
ing syncretism  produced  a  new  type  of  re- 
ligion following  the  social  assimilation  of  the 
three  resident  peoples.  It  began  here,  as 
elsewhere,  in  the  sense  of  dissatisfaction  with 
existing  beliefs  and  practices,  felt,  at  first, 
only  by  the  thoughtful  few.  They  saw  what 
was  needed  and  forthwith  one  of  their  num- 
ber placed  himself  at  the  head  of  a  movement 

243 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

for  positive  reform.  The  Christianity  of 
Arabia  had  shrunk  into  a  shapeless  mass  of 
Hfeless  dogmas,  and  beHef  in  "the  trinity" 
had  degenerated  into  tritheism.  Arabian 
Judaism  had  deteriorated  to  the  level  of  an 
idolatry  that  made  place  for  the  worship  of 
Ezra  (the  scribe  and  probable  editor  of  the 
Pentateuch),  so  that  Mohammed  complained 
of  the  "Ezrolatry"  of  his  time.  The  native 
Arabian  religion  had  sunk  into  a  diversified 
astrological  fetichism,  and  many  of  the  rites 
were  barbaric  and  immoral.  From  these 
Mohammed  recoiled,  identifying  himself  with 
the  "Hanifites,"  a  sect  opposed  to  the  popular 
idolatries  of  the  time.  Seizing  the  psycho- 
logical moment  for  the  surrender  of  all  idola- 
try on  the  part  of  Jews,  Christians  and  Arabs, 
he  called  for  a  return  to  what  he  believed  was 
the  original  Semitic  religion,  the  real  fountain- 
source  of  Judaism,  Christianity  and  Hanifism. 
First,  to  restore  the  ancestral  faith  of  Abra- 
ham, who  was  neither  Christian,  nor  Jew, 
nor  Hanif ,  and  who  stood  for  monotheism  and 
submission  to  the  one  only  true  God ;    then, 

244 


MOHAMMED 

to  blend  with  this  restored  faith  all  that  was 
vital  and  serviceable  in  each  of  the  three 
local  religions,  —  this  was  Mohammed's  work. 
He  believed  himself  to  be  a  "prophet  of  the 
Most  High"  to  whom  this  syncretism  had 
been  revealed,  yet  he  makes  no  claim  to  be 
in  any  way  or  degree  supernatural.  On  the 
contrary,  he  emphatically  affirms  that  he  is 
only  human,  like  the  rest  of  his  compatriots ; 
simply  the  medium  through  whom  the  Al- 
mighty One  has  made  knov^^n  His  will ;  merely 
the  latest  of  the  prophets,  Adam,  Noah,  Abra- 
ham, Moses  and  Jesus  having  been  the  five 
preceding  prophets. 

That  Mohammed  was  an  impostor  it  is 
difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  believe.  Ortho- 
dox Christians  and  crude  rationalists,  it  is 
true,  have  united  in  so  regarding  him,  and 
Voltaire  voiced  their  view  in  a  verse  as 
satirical  as  it  is  unjust. 

"Chaque  peuple  a  son  tour  a  brille  sur  la  terre, 
Par  les  lois,  par  les  arts  et  surtout  par  les  guerres 
Le  temps  d' Arabic  est  enfin  venii : 
II  f aut  un  nouveau  culte,  il  faut  de  nouveaux  fers, 
L  faut  un  nouveau  Dieu  pour  I'aveugle  univers." 

245 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

Voltaire's  thought  was  that  credulous  hu- 
manity had  been  victimized  by  the  crafty 
prophet  of  Arabia,  who  palmed  off  a  new 
cult,  new  chains  and  a  new  God  on  an  un- 
suspecting public  !  "Amen,"  cried  the  crude 
rationalists,  for  to  them  all  religion  is  decep- 
tion, an  unscrupulous  invention  of  politic 
priests  and  scheming  prophets.  But  I  hold 
that  among  the  notions  to  be  relegated  to  the 
realm  of  prejudice  and  superstition  are  these : 
religion  is  an  invention,  all  prophets  are  im- 
postors, Mohammed  perpetrated  the  most 
egregious  fraud  on  record.  What  is  religion  ? 
It  is  man's  expression  through  thought,  feel- 
ing and  conduct,  of  his  relation  to  the  uni- 
verse, or  to  the  Power,  or  Powers,  which  he 
thinks  of  as  governing  it.  And  since  man 
always  has  had  and  ever  will  have  some  such 
thought,  it  follows  that  religion  is  as  spon- 
taneous as  it  is  inevitable,  and  that  it  can 
never  die  while  a  thinking  being  remains  on 
the  planet.  That  Mohammed  was  not  an 
impostor  can  be  proved  by  reference  to  several 
significant  incidents  in  his  career. 

246 


MOHAMMED 

As  a  young  man  Mohammed  had  received 
a  handsome  salary  for  serving  as  custodian 
of  the  "Kaaba"  that  enshrined  the  sacred 
stone  worshipped  by  resident  believers  and 
by  visiting  pilgrims.  But  in  time  there  came 
to  be  associated  with  this  object  of  veneration 
certain  superstitious  practices  which  Moham- 
med could  not  conscientiously  indorse.  To 
criticise  them  meant  loss  of  his  position  and 
salary,  yet  he  did  not  hesitate  to  denounce 
them  and  promptly  sacrificed  his  profitable 
custodianship.  Surely  such  conduct  was  not 
that  of  an  impostor.  Again,  when  implored 
by  his  wealthy  uncle  to  desist  from  his  preach- 
ing of  "radical"  views,  Mohammed  to  name 
his  own  price  for  the  silence  his  uncle  de- 
sired, he  repudiated  the  tempting  offer,  pre- 
ferring the  luxury  of  free  thought  and  free 
speech  with  poverty,  if  need  be,  to  the  luxury 
of  ease  and  wealth  with  a  tarnished  soul. 
Read  his  own  brave  and  uncompromising 
utterance:  "Were  I  to  be  offered  the  sun  in 
my  right  hand  and  the  moon  in  my  left  hand 
to   induce  me   to   abandon   my   undertaking, 

247 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

the  offer  would  be  futile,  for  I  will  not  rest 
until  the  Lord  carry  his  cause  to  victory,  or 
till  I  die  for  it."  Could  such  be  the  part  of 
an  impostor  ?  Once  more,  his  only  claim 
was  that  of  being  the  instrument  through 
which  God  had  revealed  the  Qur'an.  He 
made  no  claim  to  be  infallible,  or  sinless,  or 
supernatural.  "Praise  me  not,"  he  said,  "as 
Jesus  was  praised.  I  am  liable  to  err  as 
other  men,  —  I,  too,  need  forgiveness  for  sin." 
Such,  surely  is  not  the  language  of  an  im- 
postor. Without  pausing  to  adduce  further 
evidence  of  Mohammed's  sincerity  and  in- 
tegrity of  purpose  we  may  justly  believe  that 
nothing  but  the  bigotry,  malice  and  jealousy  of 
enemies  originated  the  charge  of  imposture. 
And  nothing  but  blind  prejudice  and  lazy  in- 
difference to  truth  can  account  for  the  per- 
petuation of  the  charge. 

We  come  now  to  the  book  in  which  Moham- 
med's message  has  been  recorded. 

The  Qur'an  is  the  most  widely  read  of  all 
the  sacred  scriptures  of  the  world.  It  is  more 
extensively  and  frequently  read  among  Mos- 

248 


MOHAMMED 

lems  than  is  the  New  Testament  among  Chris- 
tians. It  is  claimed  for  the  Qur'an  that  if  all 
extant  copies  were  to  be  destroyed,  no  perma- 
nent loss  would  be  involved  because  there  is 
an  eternal  copy  bj''  the  throne  of  Allah  from 
which  a  fresh  revelation  could  at  any  time  be 
made.  Moreover,  the  book  is  believed  to 
have  been  revealed  to  Mohammed,  piecemeal, 
by  relays  of  angels,  he  dictating  each  "reve- 
lation" to  his  secretary,  who  at  once  committed 
it  to  writing  on  whatever  material  was  avail- 
able at  the  moment.  Finally  the  entire  series 
of  revelations  was  collected  and  edited  by 
Abu-Bekr,  in  the  year  634.  Two  features  of 
the  Qur'an  differentiate  it  from  all  other 
Bibles;  its  singleness  of  authorship  and  its 
singleness  of  text.  The  caliph  Uthman,  it  was, 
who  in  642  published  a  final  recension  of  the 
book  and  ordered  all  earlier  versions  to  be 
destroyed.  Thus  the  Qur'an  is  the  work  of 
but  one  author  and  exists  in  only  one  text.  Of 
all  the  Bibles  of  the  great  religions,  the  Qur'an 
is  the  least  attractive  to  the  general  reader. 
Curiosity  draws  him  to  its  pages,  but  he  is  soon 

249 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

repelled  because  the  book  has  no  continuity 
of  thought,  no  charm  of  style,  the  thought  and 
the  style  suggesting  the  camel  of  the  desert  — 
free  to  browse  wherever  stubble  is  to  be  found. 
The  one  hundred  and  fourteen  chapters  of  the 
book  are  provided  with  superscriptions,  indeed, 
but  these,  for  the  most  part,  bear  no  relation 
to  the  contents.  The  events  narrated  follow 
no  chronological  order,  and  only  the  patient 
scholarship  of  specialists  has  enabled  us  to 
shape  from  this  literary  waste  the  prophet's 
thought.  Mohammed  was  neither  a  theo- 
logian nor  a  philosopher,  but  a  religious  en- 
thusiast with  a  genius  for  adoption  and  adap- 
tation of  Jewish  and  Christian  lore.  He  spoke 
his  "revelations"  as  they  came,  regardless  of 
their  agreement  with  or  contradiction  of  each 
other.  When  modern  Muslims  find  two  con- 
tradictory injunctions  on  one  and  the  same 
subject,  they  take  the  one  best  suited  to 
modern  ideas.  For  this  they  find  warrant  in 
the  second  Sura:  "What  verses  we  cancel  or 
\  cause  thee  to  forget,  we  give  a  better,  or  its 

like."     Already   there  are  two  hundred   and 

250 


MOHAMMED 

twenty-five  such  cancelled  verses  on  which 
Muslims  are  agreed.  The  ultimate  criterion 
on  which  the  abrogation  of  passages  in  the 
Qur'an  depends  is  the  agreement  of  Muslims 
themselves.  "My  people,"  said  Mohammed, 
"will  never  agree  on  an  error,"  and  in  such 
agreement  is  the  hope  of  Islam.  From  the 
surcharged  brain  of  Mohammed  his  thought 
pushed  on  undiked,  unchannelled,  too  swift  to 
allow  of  skilful  or  consistent  expression.  Car- 
lyle  complained  that  the  Qur'an  was  the  most 
toilsome  reading  he  ever  undertook.  He  de- 
scribed it  as  "a  wearisome,  confused  jumble; 
endless  iterations,  long-windedness,  entangle- 
ment; most  crude,  incondite,  insupportable 
stupidity  in  short."  But,  thanks  to  the  la- 
bors of  Arabic  scholars  who  have  applied  the 
principles  of  "the  higher  criticism"  to  the 
Qur'an,  we  can  now  arrange  its  chapters  in 
chronological  order,  dividing  the  book  into 
three  sections,  corresponding  to  the  three 
periods  in  the  prophet's  career.  The  first  of 
these,  marked  by  doubt,  misgiving,  misap- 
preciation  and  opposition  is  readily  discerned 

251 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

in  a  series  of  chapters  aglow  with  enthusiasm 
bordering  on  frenzy,  recording  his  visions  with 
a  fervor  that  persuades  us  of  his  sincerity. 
The  second  period  was  that  of  growing  ap- 
preciation and  success,  and  is  reflected  in 
chapters  that  are  marked  by  calm,  dispas- 
sionate argument  addressed  to  converts  who 
recognize  his  authority.  The  third  period 
finds  the  prophet  making  concessions  and  com- 
promises for  the  sake  of  further  success.  He 
has  grown  shrewd,  calculating,  politic  in  his 
aggressive  crusade,  and  these  qualities  come 
to  light  in  a  group  of  chapters  whose  weak, 
willowy  utterances  betray  a  decided  decline 
from  the  high  plane  where  sincere  consecra- 
tion and  perfervid  enthusiasm  had  transfigured 
the  man. 

Described  in  a  single  word  the  Qur'an  is  a 
potpourri  of  myths,  legends,  narratives,  legal 
statutes,  ethical  precepts  and  ceremonial  in- 
junctions. It  is  a  reservoir  into  which,  through 
Mohammed's  mind,  many  different  streams 
of  Jewish,  Christian  and  Arabian  thought  have 
been    emptied.     As    conductor    of    caravans 

252 


MOHAMMED 


Mohammed  must  have  acquired  considerable 
information  on  Biblical  subjects.  Tales  of 
Abraham,  Moses,  the  Prophets,  Jesus,  related 
by  not  very  competent  reporters,  entered 
Mohammed's  head  and  fermented  there.  What 
he  knew  of  Old  and  New  Testament  characters 
he  never  derived  from  direct  contact  with 
these  books.  Probably  he  never  saw  a  Hebrew 
Old  Testament  or  a  Greek  New  Testament. 
But  many  a  Hebrew  and  Christian  story,  as 
recorded  in  rabbinical  books,  he  doubtless 
heard,  while  such  apocalyptic  books  as  Joel, 
Daniel,  Ezekiel,  Enoch,  Revelation,  exerted 
their  influence,  as  the  Qur'an  amply  testi- 
fies. 

The  reading  of  a  few  selected  passages  may 
well  begin  with  the  prayer  more  frequently 
recited  by  believers  than  any  other.  It  has 
been  called  the  "Lord's  Prayer"  of  Moham- 
medanism because  of  its  frequent  repetition  by 
the  faithful,  and  because,  like  the  Lord's 
Prayer  in  the  gospel  of  Matthew,  it  consists  of 
seven  verses  and  is  regarded  as  a  "summary 
of  the  faith." 

253 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

"Praise  be  to  God,  Lord  of  the  worlds  ! 
The  compassionate,  the  merciful ! 
King  on  the  day  of  reckoning  ! 
Thee  only  do  we  worship,  and  to  Thee  do  we  cry  for 

help. 
Guide  Thou  us  on  the  straight  path. 
The  path  of  those  to  whom  Thou  hast  been  gracious  ; 
With  whom  thou  art  not  angry,  and  who  go  not 
astray."  ^ 
Woe  to  those  who  stint  the  measure : 
Who  when  they  take  by  measure  from  others,  exact 

the  full ; 
But   when   they   mete   to   them   or   weigh   to   them, 

minish,  — 
What !  have  they  no  thought  that  they  shall  be  raised 

again  for  the  great  day  ? 
The  day  when  mankind  shall  stand  before  the  Lord  of 

the  worlds. 
Yes  !  the  register  of  the  wicked  is  in  Sid j  in,  a  book  dis- 
tinctly written.     Woe,  on  that  day  to  those  who 
treated  the  day  of  judgment  as  a  lie ! 
Yes;    they  shall  be  shut  out  as  by  a  veil  from  their 

Lord  on  that  day ; 
Then  shall  they  be  burned  in  Hell-fire : 
Then  shall  it  be  said  to  them,  "This  is  what  ye  deemed 

a  lie." 
Even  so.     But  the  register  of  the  righteous  is  in  Illi- 
youn;   a  book  distinctly  written;   the  angels  who 
draw  nigh  unto  God  attest  it. 
Surely,  among  delights  shall  the  righteous  dwell ! 

^  Sura  i. 

-4 

254 


MOHAMMED 

Seated  on  bridal  couches  they  will  gaze  around ; 

Thou  shalt  mark  in  their  faces  the  brightness  of  delight.^ 

This  day  have  I  perfected  your  religion  for  you  and 
have  fulfilled  up  the  measure  of  my  favors  upon  you : 
and  it  is  my  pleasure  that  Islam  be  your  religion. 

O  believers  !  when  ye  address  yourselves  to  prayer, 
wash  your  faces,  and  your  hands  up  to  the  elbow,  and 
wipe  your  heads,  and  your  feet  to  the  ankles. 

And  if  ye  have  become  unclean,  then  purify  your- 
selves. But  if  ye  are  sick,  or  on  a  journey,  and  ye 
find  no  water,  then  take  clean  sand  and  rub  your 
faces  and  your  hands  with  it. 

God  hath  promised  to  those  who  believe,  and  do 
the  things  that  are  right,  that  for  them  is  pardon  and 
a  great  reward. 

But  they  who  are  infidels  and  treat  our  signs  as  lies 
—  these  shall  be  meted  with  Hell-fire. 

O  people  of  the  Scriptures  !  now  is  our  Apostle 
come  to  you  to  clear  up  to  you  much  that  ye  have 
concealed  of  those  Scriptures,  and  to  pass  over  many 
things.  Now  hath  a  light  and  a  clear  Book  come  to 
you  from  God,  by  which  God  will  guide  him  who  shall 
follow  after  his  good  pleasure,  to  paths  of  peace,  and 
will  bring  them  out  of  the  darkness  to  the  light,  by  his 
will :  and  to  the  straight  path  will  he  guide  them.^ 

Considering  the  heterogeneous  content  of  the 
Qur'an,  it  may  be  fairly  questioned  whether 
one  is  justified  in  speaking  of  the  ethics  of  the 

*  Sura  Ixxxviii.  »  Sura  v. 

255 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

Qur'an.  Yet  despite  its  heterogeneity  there 
is  one  integrating  ethical  idea  that  pervades 
the  book,  namely  submission.  And  "sub- 
mission" (Islam)  expresses  in  a  single  word 
the  core  of  Mohammed's  message  as  a  moral 
leader.  The  supreme  duty  of  Mohammedans 
is  to  submit  to  the  will  of  "the  omnipotent, 
resistless  One,"  the  One  to  whom  everything 
is  subject,  "the  Lord  of  the  East  and  of  the 
West,"  the  all-governing,  all-compelling  One; 
"the  mighty  and  merciful  One,"  whose  mercy 
is  due  to  his  very  omnipotence.  He  is  likened 
to  the  wind  and  all  mankind  to  a  field  of  grain 
that  sways  with  the  blowing  of  the  wind.  He 
is  a  heavenly  Sultan  and  Muslims  are  they  who 
submit  to  his  decrees,  they  who,  like  the  wil- 
lows bend  before  the  blast,  while  infidels  are 
they  who,  like  the  oak,  resist  it. 

But  it  would  be  a  serious  mistake  to  sup- 
pose that  submission  as  inculcated  by  Mo- 
hammed implied  merely  a  spiritual  attitude 
on  the  part  of  believers  toward  Allah.  Four 
distinct  duties  are  involved  in  the  doctrine  of 
submission. 

256 


MOHAMMED 

First :  To  abjure  idolatry,  which  is  the  be- 
stowal upon  false  gods  of  the  homage  due  to 
Allah  alone.  Just  as  the  subjects  of  an  earthly 
Sultan  are  instantly  punished  to  the  full  extent 
of  the  civil  law  when  they  dare  to  enthrone  a 
usurper  and  do  him  homage,  so  idolaters  who 
dare  to  acknowledge  any  other  God  than  this 
heavenly  Sultan  will  be  punished  hereafter, 
on  the  Judgment  Day,  to  the  full  extent  of  the 
religious  law.  Every  mosque,  every  palace 
bears  witness  to  Mohammed's  abhorrence  of 
idolatr}'.  Nowhere  are  statues,  or  images, 
or  any  sort  of  reproductions  of  the  human  form 
to  be  seen,  but  everywhere  arabesque  decora- 
tions, —  those  geometric  traceries  that  repro- 
duce only  objects  from  the  inanimate  world. 

Second :  To  extend  the  heavenly  Sultan's 
dominion  on  earth,  to  make  converts,  by  force 
if  need  l)e,  because  refusal  to  acknowledge  and 
obey  Alliih  is  rebellion,  and  rebellion  must  be 
suppressed,  by  persuasion  if  possible  and  if 
not,  then  by  force.  Like  Robespierre,  Mo- 
hammed believed  in  the  efficacv  of  fear,  hold- 
ing  that  the  preservation  of  a  creed  and  of  good 

s  257 


GREAT    RELIGIOUS    TEACHERS 

character  is  insured  only  by  the  discipHne  of 
terror. 

But  here  we  must  distinguish  between  the 
prophet's  earher  and  later  injunctions.  In 
the  earlier  chapters  of  the  Qur'an  he  constantly 
exhorts  his  Meccan  followers  to  bear  patiently 
the  wrongs  inflicted  on  them  because  of  their 
religion.  His  earliest  permission  to  fight  is 
given  to  those  "who  have  been  driven  forth 
from  their  homes  undeservedly"  merely  for 
saying  "Our  Lord  is  God."  ^  A  more  general 
warrant  for  making  war  on  the  Meccans  is 
given  in  the  second  Sura  (186-190):  "Fight  in 
God's  way  with  those  who  fight  with  you,  but 
do  not  take  the  aggressive;  verily  God  loves 
not  the  aggressor."  Later,  Mohammed  used 
force  without  hesitation,  not  only  against  the 
Meccans,  but  to  subdue  other  cities,  like  Ta'if, 
and  to  bring  the  Bedouin  tribes  into  submis- 
sion.^ But  it  is  clear  that  the  motive  of  these 
wars,  as  of  those  against  the  Jews  in  Medina 
and  its  vicinity,  was  political  rather  than  re- 

»  Sura  xxii.  40,  42. 

«  Sura  xvi.  37,  84 ;   xxix.  45 ;  xlli.  47,  257,  64,  12. 

258 


MOHAMMED 

liglous,  though  Mohammed,  as  the  head  of  a 
church-state,  doubtless  regarded  the  two  as 
identical.  At  the  moment  of  his  death  he  had 
an  army  marshalled  for  an  expedition  into 
Syria.  In  one  of  the  apparently  authentic 
traditions  he  urges  his  followers  to  make  war 
upon  unbelievers  until  they  confess  the  unity 
of  God  and  then  grant  them  security.  In  his 
aggressive  policy  he  distinguished  heathen 
polytheists  and  idolaters  from  the  adherents 
of  the  "revealed  religions,  Judaism  and  Chris- 
tianity," tolerating  the  latter  and  exacting  a 
tax  from  them  for  protection  received,  while 
the  former  he  constrained  to  abandon  their 
errors  and  submit  to  Allah. ^ 

Never  has  it  been  either  the  principle  or 
the  practice  of  Islam  to  convert  people  gener- 
ally, by  forcible  means.  Many  of  the  early 
caliphs,  for  economic  reasons,  disapproved  of 
voluntary  conversion  of  their  Jewish  and  Chris- 
tian subjects.  More  fanatical  rulers  laid  the 
adherents  of  other  religions  under  so  many  dis- 
advantages  that   members    of   them   became 

^Sura  xvi.  126;   xlii.  13,  14;  iii.  19,  99,  100;   xxii.  66;  ix.  6,  11. 

259 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

Moslems  for  relief.  In  the  first  appendix  to 
T.  W.  Arnold's  "The  Preaching  of  Islam"  there 
is  an  exhaustive  array  of  quotations  from  the 
Qur'an,  regarding  Mohammed's  attitude  to 
missionary  work,  which  the  doctrine  of  sub- 
mission requires.  Here,  in  chronological  order 
the  texts  are  marshalled,  including  those  abro- 
gated by  the  agreements  of  the  Moslems. 

The  third  obligation  which  submission  in- 
volves is  obedience  to  the  precepts  of  Allah,  the 
making  of  one's  moral  account  "square"  be- 
fore the  Judgment  Day  dawns.  For  on  that 
Day  the  heavenly  Sultan  determines  the  fate 
of  each  human  soul.  Then  will  a  man  walking 
to  the  Judgment-seat  be  met  by  a  loathsome- 
looking  object  to  which  he  will  say,  "Be  gone; " 
but  it  will  reph%  "I  cannot,  I  am  thy  con- 
science." Then  will  the  fraudulent  buyer  and 
the  fraudulent  seller  walk  to  the  Judgment-seat 
with  the  goods  they  dishonestly  bought  or  sold 
tied  to  their  necks  and  dragging  behind  them  ! 
No  religion  has  made  so  much  of  the  utilitarian 
motive  of  reward  and  punishment  as  has  Mo- 
hammedanism, nor  is  it  anywhere  presented  in 

260 


\ 


MOHAMMED 

such   frankly    materialistic    terms    as    in    the 
Qur'an. 

The  fourth  factor  in  the  ethics  of  submis- 
sion is  loyal  devotion  to  the  "five  pillars  of 
fidelity,"  as  they  are  called,  the  simple  re- 
ligious forms,  binding  upon  all  believers  :  — 

1.  Repetition  of  the  creed,  "There  is  no  God  but 
Allah,  and  Mohammed  is  his  prophet." 

2.  Prayer  and  ablutions  five  times  daily  in  response 
to  the  Muezzin  when  he  ascends  his  minaret  to  summon 
the  faithful  to  prayer. 

3.  Almsgiving,  two  and  a  half  per  cent  of  one's  pos- 
sessions to  be  devoted  to  philanthropy. 

4.  Fasting  from  sunrise  to  sunset  of  the  month  of 
"Ramadan,"  in  which  the  prophet  fled  from  Mecca  to 
Medina. 

5.  A  pilgrimage,  at  least  once  in  one's  lifetime,  to 
Mecca. 

In  the  simplicity  of  these  requirements 
Mohammed  showed  his  practical  wisdom. 
Only  the  fifth  was  for  many  a  hardship,  and 
eventually  it  was  modified  to  meet  conditions 
where  fulfilment  was  most  difficult  or  impos- 
sible. So  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  pro- 
tects its  members  against  ceremonial  oppres- 
sion  by   corresponding   concessions ;     so   the 

261 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

apostle  Paul  abolished  the  rite  of  circumcision, 
though  deemed  by  his  fellow-Jews  to  be  the 
badge  of  noblest  citizenship. 

In  the  ethical  legislation  that  Mohammed 
provided  for  his  theocracy,  prominence  was 
given  to  total  abstinence  from  intoxicating 
liquor  and  to  humaneness.  Drunkenness  is 
the  vice  most  to  be  feared  in  tropical  countries 
and  was  generally  condemned  as  a  violation 
of  Divine  Law.  Mohammed's  opposition  to 
Christianity  was  based,  in  part,  upon  its  fail- 
ure to  put  an  absolute  veto  on  the  use  of  in- 
toxicants. General  Lew  Wallace,  after  twenty 
years'  residence  in  Constantinople,  declared 
that  while  Christian  drunkards  were  to  be  seen 
daily  in  the  city  streets,  he  never  once  saw  a 
drunken  Mohammedan.  In  the  estimation  of 
President  Eliot  of  Harvard  University  Mo- 
hammedanism has  been  a  vastly  better  thing 
for  many  of  the  tribes  of  Africa,  habitually 
drunk,  than  Christianity  could  have  been.  A 
"Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 
Animals"  is  unknown  in  Mohammedan  coun- 
tries except  in  cities  overrun  with  Christians, 

262 


MOHAMMED 

and  in  Turkish  cemeteries,  It  Is  said,  the  four 
corners  of  slabs  that  cover  graves  are  grooved 
to  catch  the  rainfall  so  that  the  birds  may  drink 
and  sing  over  the  places  where  their  human 
brethren  sleep. 

The  charge  of  advocating  polygamy  and 
slavery  has  been  made  against  Mohammed 
many  times.  But  it  were  well  if  his  critics 
paused  to  remember  that  these  evils  existed 
for  centuries  before  his  time  and  that  the  most 
he  could  do  was  to  improve  the  condition  of 
slaves  and  the  position  of  women.  From  sev- 
eral Suras  we  learn  that  he  inculcated  kindly 
treatment  of  slaves  and  ranked  their  eman- 
cipation as  a  virtue  for  which  the  slave- 
holder would  be  abundantly  rewarded  in 
paradise.  Certainly  we  to-day  are  too  near 
the  *' emancipation  proclamation"  to  dare 
to  reproach  Mohammed  for  not  having  abol- 
ished slavery. 

In  dealing  with  the  problem  of  marriage  and 
divorce  Mohammed  limited  the  number  of 
wives  a  man  could  have  to  four,  at  the  same 
time  prescribing  monogamy  for  all  who  could 

263 


GREAT  RELIGIOUS  TEACHERS 

not  make  proper  provision  for  more  than  one 
wife.  He  conditioned  divorce  upon  four 
months'  support  of  the  wife  after  separation 
had  taken  place  and  he  required  four  witnesses 
to  vindicate  a  charge  of  adultery,  punishing 
with  a  hundred  stripes  and  imprisonment  any- 
one who  failed  to  prove  the  charge/ 

When  we  remember  the  utterly  uncivilized 
character  of  the  tribes  that  inhabited  Africa 
and  parts  of  Asia  at  the  time  of  Mohammed's 
appearance,  we  may  well  believe  that  his  gospel 
of  submission  was  exactly  suited  to  the  needs 
of  those  peoples,  for  they  were  still  in  the  child- 
hood stage  of  development,  in  which  obedi- 
ence to  rulers  and  rules  is  the  highest  virtue. 
Nor  is  anything  in  religious  history  more  re- 
markable than  the  way  in  which  Mohammed 
fitted  his  transfiguring  ideas  into  the  existing 
social  system  of  Arabia.  To  his  everlasting 
credit  it  must  be  said  that  in  lifting  to  a  higher 
plane  of  life  the  communities  of  his  day  and 
place,  he  achieved  that  which  neither  the 
Judaism   nor   the    Christianity   of    mediaeval 

1  See  Suras  2,  4,  24,  65. 
264 


MOHAMMED 


Arabia  could  accomplish.  Nay  more,  in  the 
fulfilment  of  that  civilizing  work  Mohammed 
rendered  invaluable  service,  not  only  to  Arabia, 
but  also  to  the  entire  world. 


265 


BRIEF  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Arnold,  T.  W,     The  Preaching  of  Islam. 

Bloomfield,  M.     The  Religion  of  the  Veda. 

Carlyle,  T.  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship.  (Moham- 
med.) 

Carus,  Paul.     The  Gospel  of  the  Buddha. 

Clodd,  Edward.     The  Birth  and  Growth  of  Myth. 

The  Childhood  of  Religions. 

GoLDZiHER,  I.     The  Rehgion  of  Islam. 

Harnack,  a.     The  Expansion  of  Christianity. 

Haug,  M.     Essays. 

HiRTH,  F.     China. 

Jackson,  A.  V.  W.     Zoroaster,  the  Prophet  of  Iran. 

Janes,  L.  G.     A  Study  of  Primitive  Christianity. 

Johnson,  S.     China.     (Oriental  Rehgions.) 

Persia.     (Oriental  Religions.) 

The  Religions  of  India. 

Legge,  J.     Chinese  Classics. 

LoisY,  A.     The  Rehgion  of  Israel. 

Mueller,  Max.     Auld  Lang  Syne,  2  vols. 

Collected  Essays,  2  vols. 

What  Can  India  Teach  Us  ? 

Oldenberg,  H.     Buddha. 

Pfleiderer,  Otto.     Religion  and  Historic  Faiths. 

The  Apostle  Paul. 

The  Philosophy  and  Development  of  Religion. 

Rhys-Davids,  T.  W.     Buddhism. 

Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  ed.  M.  Mueller.  Oxford 
edition. 

Schmidt,  N.    The  Prophet  of  Nazareth. 

267 


BRIEF   BIBLIOGRATHY 

Smith,   W.   R.     The   Old   Testament  in  the   Jewish 

Church. 

The  Prophets  of  Israel. 

TiELE,  C.  P.     OutUnes  of  History  of  Religions,  last 

edition. 
Toy,  C.  H.     Judaism  and  Christianity. 


268 


npHE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a 
few  of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects 


NEW  RELIGIOUS  WORKS 

By  henry  CHURCHILL  KING 

President  of  Oberlin  College 

The  Moral  and  Religious 
Challenge  of  Our  Times 

Clotk,  i2mo,  $/.jo  net 

The  whole  question  of  the  moral  and  religious  development  of  the 
race  is  the  world  problem  which  President  King  faces  in  his  new  book. 
He  points  out  how  in  this  development  the  basic  principle  of  rever- 
ence, for  personality  has  been  unconsciously  a  guiding  principle.  For 
the  purpose  of  determining  what  challenge  the  outstanding  external 
features  of  the  present  life  of  the  world  bring  to  the  moral  and  relig- 
ious forces,  he  makes  a  careful  survey  of  these  features.  After  he 
has  done  the  same  for  the  new  inner  world  of  thought  he  turns  fur 
the  light  to  be  found  from  the  historical  trend,  especially  of  Western 
civilization,  dealing  with  the  problem  a  little  more  closely  as  revealed 
in  our  own  national  life.  In  conclusion  he  takes  up  the  program  of 
Western  civilization  and  its  spread  over  the  world. 


By  GEORGE  HODGES 

Dean  of  the  Episcopal  Theological  School  of  Harvard  University 

Everyman's  Religion 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $/.jo  net 

Underlying  the  many  sects  of  the  Christian  religion  there  are  certain 
fundamental  facts  which  are  sometimes  lost  sight  of  in  the  devotion 
to  a  particular  creed.  The  purpose  of  Dean  Hodges's  book  is  to  pre- 
sent these  essential  elements  of  Christian  faith  and  life  in  a  manner 
simple,  unconventional  and  appealing  to  a  man's  common  sense.  The 
conclusions  which  the  author  arrives  at  are  largely  orthodox,  but  the 
reasoning  makes  no  use  of  the  argument  from  authority. 


PUBLISHED    BY 

THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  Tork 


By  WALTER  RAUSCHENBUSCH 

Author  of  "  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis  " 

Christianizing  the  Social  Order 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $/.jo  net 

Dr.  Rauschenbusch's  former  book  "  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis  " 
called  for  a  social  awakening  of  the  moral  and  religious  forces;  his 
new  book  shows  that  this  awakening  is  now  taking  place,  and  to  that 
extent  is  full  of  hopefulness.  Dr.  Rauschenbusch  examines  the 
present  social  order  to  determine  what  portions  have  already  been 
Christianized  and  what  portions  have  not  yet  submitted  to  the  revolu- 
tionizing influence  of  the  Christian  law  and  spirit.  The  process  by 
which  these  unredeemed  sections  of  modern  life  can  be  Christianized 
are  discussed  and  the  Christian  Social  Order  in  the  process  of  making 
is  exhibited. 

By  NEWELL  DWIGHT  HILLIS 

Author  of  "  The  Quest  of  Happiness," 
"The  Influence  of  Christ  in  Modern  Life,"  etc. 

Success  Through  Self-Help 

Cloth,  i2tno,  $i.£0  net 

For  more  than  ten  years  Dr.  Hillis  has  been  pastor  of  one  of  the 
largest  churches  in  Brooklyn,  and  though  his  duties  to  his  parish  are 
by  no  means  light  he  has  still  found  time  to  extend  through  writing 
his  already  great  influence  upon  religious  thought.  Dr.  Hillis  is  as 
practical  in  his  writing  as  he  is  in  his  preaching,  and  his  book  "  Success 
Through  Self-Help  "  will  be  found  to  contain  many  valuable  thoughts 
clothed  in  vigorous,  inspiring  language. 

By  WILLIAM  DeW.   HYDE 

President  of  Bowdoin  College 

The  Five  Great  Philosophies  of  Life 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.^0  net 

The  five  centuries  from  the  birth  of  Socrates  to  the  death  of  Christ 
produced  five  principles:  The  Epicurean  pursuit  of  pleasure;  the 
Stoic  law  of  self-control;  the  Platonic  Plan  of  Subordination;  the 
Aristotelian  Sense  of  Proportion,  and  the  Christian  Spirit  of  Love. 
The  purpose  of  this  book,  which  is  a  revised  and  considerably  en- 
larged edition  of  "  From  Epicurus  to  Christ,"  is  to  let  the  masters  of 
these  sane  and  wholesome  principles  of  personality  talk  to  us  in  their 
own  words. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

Publighers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


The  Hartford-Lamson  Lectures  on  the 
Rehgions  of  the  World 

These  lectures  are  designed  primarily  to  give  students  preparing  for 
the  foreign  missionary  field  a  good  knowledge  of  the  religious  history, 
beliefs,  and  customs  of  the  peoples  among  whom  they  expect  to  labor. 

Volumes  in  the  Series  now  Ready 

By  FRANK  BYRON  JEVONS 

Principal  of  Bishop  Hatfield's  Hall,  Durham  University,  Dur- 
ham, England. 

An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of 

Comparative  Rehgion  Cloth,  isnw,  $1.50  net 

"  It  is  intended  as  a  defence  of  Christianity  and  also  as  a  help  to  the  Christian 
missionary,  by  indicating  the  relation  of  Christianity  to  other  religions.  It  is  an 
admirable  introduction  to  the  subject,  clear  in  style,  sound  in  method,  and  with  a 
comprehensive  grasp  of  facts.  Of  especial  value  is  the  emphasis  placed  on  the  social 
power  of  religion  and  of  the  way  in  which,  in  Christianity,  society  and  the  individual 
are  mutually  ends  and  means  to  each  other.  The  book  may  be  cordially  commended, 
especially  to  those  who  are  beginners  or  those  who  wish  a  treatment  that  is  free  from 
technical  difficulties. "  —  JV^ew  Y'ork  Times. 

By  Dr.  J.  J.  M.  DE  GROOT 

The  Chinese  Rehgion  Cloth,  ismo,  $1.50  net 

A  scholarly  and  detailed  account  of  the  intricate  religions  of  the  Chinese  —  which  up  to 
late  years  have  been  impenetrable  puzzles  to  the  Occidental  mind.  The  author  is  one 
of  the  best  authorities  on  the  subject  which  the  world  possesses. 

By  DUNCAN  BLACK  MacDONALD,  M.A.,  D.D. 

Sometime  Scholar  and  Fellow  of  the  Utiiversity  of  Glasgow;  Pro- 
fessor of  Semitic  Languages  in  Hartford  Theological  Seminary. 

Aspects    of    Islam  Cloth,  ismo,  $1.^0  net 

This  valuable  contribution  to  the  study  of  comparative  religion  is  the  third  in  the 
series  of  Hartford-Lamson  Lectures,  following  the  publication  of  Principal  Jevons' 
"  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Comparative  Religion,"  apd  Dr.  De  Groot's  "  The 
Religion  of  the  Chinese."  Dr.  MacDonald  has  written  a  book  which  will  appeal 
especially  perhaps  to  the  beginner  and  the  general  reader,  for  he  has  dealt  in  broad 
outlines  and  statements  and  not  in  details  and  qualifications.  At  the  same  time  he  is 
absolutely  accurate  as  to  conditions,  despite  the  fact  that  in  all  probability  some 
"  Arabists  "  will  be  surprised  at  many  of  the  things  he  has  set  down. 


PUBLISHED    BY 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


By  W.  H.   p.  FAUNCE 

President  of  Broion    University 

The  Educational  Ideal  in  the  Ministry 

"  With  a  largeness  of  vision  and  soundness  of  advice  that  are  notable, 
the  whole  book  treats  of  the  minister's  unequalled  responsibilities  and 
opportunities  in  a  time  of  changing  views."  —  JVew  York  Observer. 

Cloth,  ■$j.2j  net;  by  mail,  ■Sf.JS 


By  the  Rev.   R.  J.   CAMPBELL 

Minister  of  the   City    Temple,   London 


The  New  Theology 


"  An  outline  of  what  one  man,  in  a  London  pulpit,  is  doing  towards 
interpreting  the  gospel  in  terms  consistent  with  modern  science  and 
historical  criticism,  and  its  appeal  is  not  to  scholars  so  much  as  to  the 
average  man,  especially  the  man  who  has  lost  faith  in  the  traditional 
creeds  and  in  the  organized  religion  of  the  day." —  Coytgregaiionalist. 

Cloth,  crown  Svo,  $1,30  net ;  by  mail,  $i.bo 

New  Theology  Sermons 

A  SELECTION  OF  THE  SERMONS  PREACHED  IN  THE  CITY  TEMPLE, 
LONDON 

"All  who  know  Mr.  Campbell  admit  his  goodness  and  transparent 
sincerity.  He  has  stirred  the  intellectual  and  religious  life  of  Eng- 
land as  it  has  not  been  stirred  for  many  years." —  The  Standard. 

Cloth,  $1.^0  net;  by  mail,  $i.6a 

Christianity  and  the  Social  Order 

"There  is  a  wonderful  force  of  conviction  felt  pulsating  in  these 
clear  and  trenchant  sentences,"  —  Standard. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.30  net ;  by  mail,  $1.62 

Thursday  Mornings  at  the  City  Temple 

A  selection  of#the  informal  addresses  which  have  done  much  to  give 
Mr.  Campbell  a  larger  personal  following  than  any  other  preacher  in 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $i.jo  net ;  by  mail.  Si. 60 


THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


By  H.    fielding   HALL 

"All  those  who  have  lived  both  in  the  East  and  the  West,  and  espe- 
cially those  who  are  versed  in  our  o«n  social  questions,  will  at  once 
allow  that  for  the  great  majority  of  the  working  classes  the  superiority 
of  Western  civilization  is  a  doubtful  point.  And  in  the  domain  of 
thought  as  applied  to  the  conduct  of  life  no  serious  student  would 
deny  the  importance  of  Eastern  influence.  And  from  this  douMe 
point  of  view  Mr.  P'ielding  Hall's  contribution  to  our  knowledge  is  of 
great  value  and  interest.  The  books  deserve  careful  study,"  —  The 
Morning  Post,  London. 

The  Soul  of  a  People  Cloth,  8vo,  $j.oo  net 

Fourth  Reprinting  of  a  Fourth  Edition 

An  account  of  observations  among  the  Burmese,  before  and  after  the 
War  of  Annexation,  through  which  the  faith  of  the  people  revealed 
itself. 

A  People  at  School  Chth,  8vo,  $3.00  net 

It  corresponds  to  the  earlier  book  as  the  inner  life  of  the  feelings, 
emotions,  and  ideals  is  related  to  the  outer  life  of  success  and  failure, 
of  progress  and  retrogression,  judged  as  nations  judge  each  other.  It 
treats  of  the  Burmese  before  annexation  and  of  the  ways  in  which  it 
has  affected  them. 

The  Hearts  of  Men  Cloth,  8vo,  $3.00  net 

This  is  a  book  not  of  one  religion,  or  several  religions,  but  of  religion, 
treated  with  the  delightful  lucidity  of  the  East.  There  is  something 
very  appealing  in  the  whole  spirit  of  this  man  who  seeks  for  light,  a 
gentleness  that  is  restful,  an  utter  absence  of  bitterness  even  where 
there  must  be  condemnation,  a  great  patience  and  serenity  in  that 
religion  which  is  "  the  music  of  the  infinite  echoed  from  the  hearts  of 
men." 

The  Inward  Light  $1.75  net,  by  mail,  $1.86 

"An  enchanting  book  .  .  .  vital  with  human  interest."  —  //ezv  York 
Tribune. 

"  Its  publication  is  an  event,  because  it  expresses  in  a  new  and  origi- 
nal form  what  even  the  most  sceptical  cannot  but  admit  to  be  a  rational 
and  beautiful  outlook  on  life."  —  North  American  Review. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


B.    L.    PUTNAM   WEALE'S    BOOKS 

Mr.  Weak  is  the  recognized  authority  on  the  current  history 
of  the  Far  East.  "  He  is  beyond  question  exceedingly  well 
equipped  with  varied  first-hand  information.  .  .  .  He  clearly 
knows  what  he  is  talking  about  and  he  has  uncommon  power 
for  picturesque  characterization."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

The  Coming  Struggle  in  Eastern  Asia 

Cloth,  8vo,  illustrated,  with  map,  $3.^0  net 

This  book  contains  a  critical  account  of  the  Japanese  plan  and 
policy  since  the  great  war  ;  a  clear  description  of  the  changes 
taking  place  in  China;  and  finally  a  frank  statement,  in  out- 
line, of  the  attitude  which  seems  to  Mr.  Weale  forced  upon 
the  United  States  by  its  possession  of  the  Philippine  Islands. 

No  better  account  of  History  in  the  Far  East  is  to  be  found  than 
Mr.  Weale' s  successive  books :  — 

Manchu  and  Muscovite  cioth,  8vo,  $3.00  net 

"  In  its  essence  the  book  is  so  far  superior  to  all  other  books 
on  the  subject  of  Russian  rule  in  Manchuria  that  it  may  be 
considered  really  the  only  one."  —  Daily  News,  London. 

The  Reshaping  of  the  Far  East 

In  two  volumes,  fully  illustrated.     Cloth,  8vo,  $6.00  net 

"The  best  account  of  twentieth  century  China  in  existence."  — 
Atheneum. 

"  Emphatically  a  work  without  which  the  library  of  the  student 
of  the  Far  East  will  be  incomplete."  —  Daily  Telegraph. 

The  Truce  in  the  East  and  its  Aftermath 

A  sequel  to,  and  uniform  with,  "  The  Reshaping  of  the  Far  East." 
With  illustrations  and  map.     Cloth,  8vo,  $3.50  net 

"  The  most  significant  and  interesting  volume  on  the  political 
and  commercial  situation  in  Eastern  Asia  since  the  recent 
war."  —  Record- Herald,  Chicago. 


PUBLISHED    BY 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  AT  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


'JAN  6     )943 

BW  1  9  19^3 


AUG  9     1952 

JUL  1  8  XE-CU 


fioEC 


|£NEMA>-   JAN 


Form  L-9 

10m -3, '30(7752) 


DjNiV&A^UTI  e>l  i.Ai^il' unjNiA 


LOS  ASnELKS 
LIBKA!^v 


FACILITY 


AA    000  625  419 


sur 

THE  SEVE 

STATION  0.  BOX 


